Afghanistan: New air and artillery strikes kill hundreds of civilians claim eyewitnesses

September 2: Even as hundreds of Kabul residents angrily protested the killing of a young family in pre-dawn raids in a Kabul suburb, there were more reports of civilian killings from an airstrike by the US-led occupation forces in Helmand province, in southern Afghanistan, and from an artillery barrage in Paktika province.

Reuters received reports of the Helmand killings from a number of residents in Sangin, the district where the bloodshed allegedly occurred. This news has not yet been confirmed by the Afghan government, which last week threatened to reconsider the role of foreign troops after another air strike on August 22, killed 90 civilians, including over 50 children. According to an Agenzia Giornalistica Italia report, the commander of the US-led contingent in the area has not commented on the latest charges but said that last week in the Helmand province 220 suspected Taliban fighters had been killed.
AGI added that, in Kabul, hundreds of Afghans have been protesting in the streets against the death of four civilians, including two very young children, which happened this morning during an operation by foreign troops in the suburbs of the eastern part of the capital. This was claimed by the demonstrators, who showed journalists the bodies of two of the young children, saying that in an attack on a house in the Hoodkhail village a man and a woman also lost their lives. A witness, Mohammad Naweed, said that the international troops took the three men from the house after having blown up a bomb to open a passageway. It is not clear whether the woman killed was the mother of the two young boys. The commander of the ISAF contingent said that he did not have any reports on "our soldiers' involvement in this operation."
Occupation force have admitted "accidentally" killing three children in an artillery strike in eastern Afghanistan after insurgents attacked its patrol in Gayan district of Paktika province. One of the rounds hit a house, killing three children and injuring seven civilians. But a local official says hundreds were killed.
Al Jazeera quoted Dad Mohammad Khan, a former provincial intelligence chief and politician, saying: "There is basically no Taliban [killed]. The Taliban fire and then escape and then these people [foreign troops] come and bombard. Three hundred people have been killed and wounded".
A statement by NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said:
"ISAF deeply regrets this accident and an investigation as to the exact circumstances of this tragic event is now under way."
Source: Agenzia Giornalistica Italia, Al-Jazeera

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