The NATO-led force in Afghanistan said on Thursday, February 24, it was investigating another case where its troops may have killed or wounded civilians, with an Afghan official saying the force killed five people on a hunting trip.
This week, the governor of eastern Kunar province said 64 civilians were killed during four days of operations by NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan troops.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai put the toll there at "more than 50". Senior ISAF officials disputed their account, saying weapons systems surveillance indicated only insurgents had been killed, but said the force was investigating.
On Thursday, February 25, ISAF said it was also investigating a separate incident where an unspecified number of civilian casualties may have been caused during an "air to ground engagement" in the mountainous Alah Say district of Kapisa province in the east.
"We take civilian casualties very seriously, we’ll investigate this incident as quickly as possible," ISAF spokesman Colonel Patrick Hynes said in a statement.
Hynes also said "initial operations reports" indicated armed insurgents had been targeted.
However, Alah Say district governor Mohammad Omari said an ISAF helicopter had fired on three men and two children on a hunting trip before dawn on Thursday. All five were killed, Omari told Reuters.
"They had hunting guns but were civilians," Omari said.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that a U.S. soldier faces a court martial on charges that he shot and killed an Afghan civilian with a pistol in another eastern village last September.
That case underscored a growing sense of anger among many Afghans who have difficulty obtaining justice or compensation after members of their families are killed.
INSURGENCY GROWS
The support of Afghanistan’s rural populations is a vital element of ISAF attempts to turn the tide against a Taliban-led insurgency that has grown considerably in the past year despite the presence of about 150,000 foreign troops.
Violence across Afghanistan last year reached its highest level since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001, with civilian and military casualties at record levels.
Rules governing air strikes and night raids have been tightened significantly by NATO-led forces in the past two years, leading to a drop in civilian casualties caused by their troops.
A United Nations report late last year found that civilian casualties in Afghanistan rose 20 percent in the first 10 months of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, with more than three-quarters killed or wounded by insurgents.
The United Nations found there were 6,215 civilian casualties in the period, including 2,412 deaths. Those caused by Afghan and foreign "pro-government" forces accounted for 12 percent of the total, an 18 percent drop.
On Monday, ISAF said it was investigating another incident in eastern Nangarhar province a day earlier. A spokesman for the Nangarhar governor said six civilians had been killed. Reuters television pictures showed a house with a large hole in its roof and coffins containing two dead children.
