HERAT, Afghanistan: An official investigation has found that around 90 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in coalition air strikes this week, the Afghan religious affairs minister said yesterday.
The Afghan and US-led coalition military forces involved in the anti-Taleban operation that called in the strikes on Friday had also not coordinated their actions, Minister of Haj and Islamic Affairs Nematullah Shahrani said.
Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai fired two top Afghan army commanders yesterday after coalition air strikes he said killed more than 89 civilians in one of the deadliest such incidents since 2001. A presidential decree “orders the immediate removal” of the top army general for western Afghanistan and a commando commander after Friday’s joint Afghan and US-led coalition operation in Heart province, a statement said.
Gen. Jalandar Shah Behnam, head of the corps for western Afghanistan, and commando Maj. Abdul Jabar, were fired for “negligence and concealing facts,” it said, giving no details.
“In the tragic airstrike and irresponsible and imprecise military operation in Azizabad village in Shindand district more than 89 of our innocent countrymen, including women and children, were martyred,” the statement said.
The Interior Ministry previously put the death toll at 76, including around 50 children and 19 women. The coalition has insisted only 30 militants were killed but has said it is looking into the incident.
If the president’s toll is confirmed, it would be one of the highest for civilians since international troops arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 and toppled the hard-line Taleban regime now waging a growing insurgency. There has been a string of incidents in which the military forces on which Karzai’s government relies have killed civilians by accident.
The president has regularly appealed to the US and NATO-led forces to take more care amid warnings that such casualties are costing the government and troops the goodwill of the war-weary Afghan people.
The country’s top rights group, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, also had investigators on the ground, chief executive director Hossain Ali Ramoz said.
The area of the strikes was near the Shindand airfield that is used by international forces.
Most of the roughly 15 houses destroyed in the strikes belonged to men who worked at the airstrip as security guards, district chief La’l Mohammad Omarzai said.
Most of the dead had gathered in a house to mark the 40th day since the killing of a militia commander, in accordance with Afghan tradition, he said.
The area was calm yesterday, the defence ministry said, after angry demonstrations on Saturday in which chanting villagers torched a police van, overturned a delivery truck and carried banners that read “Death to America.”
