KABUL, 5 July 2005 — The US military yesterday admitted killing civilians in an airstrike in eastern Afghanistan last week and a provincial governor said 17 villagers including women and children had died.
The civilians were killed when US planes pounded a suspected militant hide-out in rebel-infested Kunar province late Friday amid the search for a small team of US special forces soldiers, the governor said.
Two members of the American special forces team are dead, the BBC reported yesterday. Citing military sources, the BBC said another member of the four-member team had been rescued but the whereabouts of the fourth member remained unclear.
“Coalition forces deeply regret the loss of innocent lives and are investigating the incident to prevent future occurrences,” a US military statement said, without specifying the number of civilian deaths.
“Seventeen civilians died in the US bombing” of Chichal village in Kunar, provincial governor Assadullah Wafa told AFP. “There are a number of children and women among the victims but I don’t have the exact figure right now.”
Military helicopters and other aircraft were still patrolling the area but there had been no more bombing, Wafa added.
American-led forces have mistakenly killed scores of Afghan civilians since engineering the fall of the Taleban regime in late 2001, including 48 who died when a wedding party came under attack three years ago.
The US statement said American forces struck a “terrorist compound in Kunar province with precision-guided munitions that resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of enemy terrorists and non-combatants.
The ousted Taleban regime, which claimed responsibility for shooting down the MH-47 Chinook helicopter last week, said Saturday that US bombing had killed 25 civilians including children.
