Afghanistan

Protests as 76 reported killed by US air-strikes

Article published on the 2008-08-23 Latest update 2008-08-24 08:36 TU

International troops in Afghanistan
(Photo: Reuters)

About 250 villagers staged an angry demonstration on Saturday in Azizabad, south of the city of Herat, according to western Afghanistan Police Chief General Akram Yawar, following an international air strike which the Interior Ministry says killed 76 people. The US military, which has promised an enquiry, insists that 30 Taliban fighters were the only people killed.

President Hamid Karzai condemned civilian casualties in a statement and the Interior Ministry gave details of those it says were killed.

The dead were "19 women, seven men and the rest children all under 15 years of age," it said.

But the US military said that it was "very confident" of its version, claiming that its troops entered the compound and identified the dead.

It says that fighting and air strikes followed an ambush on troops who were going to arrest a Taliban commander.

On Saturday's demonstration villagers hurled stones at Afghan troops, forcing them to retreat to their compound after firing in the air and wounding two people, according to General Yawar.

Karzai has appointed a delegation headed by Religious Affairs Minister Nehmatullah Shahrani to visit the area and report back within a week. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which says that 900 civilians have been killed by insurgents or international troops this year, has also sent a team.

A mine-clearing agency, working under contract to the UN, on Saturday said that 13 of its mine-clearers were kidnapped four days ago in the eastern province of Paktia and that six of them are still in captivity.

"I think the general feeling is that things have taken a downward turn, especially in the past few weeks or few months," correspondent Bronwen Roberts called RFI.

"We’ve seen some very big co-ordinated attacks on Nato and US soldiers. We had one on Monday that killed ten French soldiers, just a few weeks before that, we had one on a base that killed nine American soldiers and … the insurgents are carrying out very effective suicide bombings and, of course, we have these very heavy military operations in which, quite often it seems, civilians are being killed."

French Prime Minister François Fillon on Friday proposed a vote in the National Assembly on the French troop presence in Afghanistan, amid continuing controversy over the killing of ten French soldiers in a Taliban attack this week.