YAQOUBI, Afghanistan: The commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan flew on Saturday to the scene of a deadly airstrike by his forces, trying to cool anger that threatens his strategy of winning hearts and minds.
Afghan officials say scores of people were killed, many of them civilians, when a US F-15 fighter jet called in by German troops struck two hijacked fuel trucks before dawn on Friday.
The incident was the first in which Western forces are accused of killing large numbers of civilians since US Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal took command in June, announcing that protecting Afghans was the centerpiece of a new strategy.
In an unprecedented televised address to the Afghan people, the general said his forces had launched the airstrike against what they thought was a Taleban target. He promised to make the outcome of an investigation public.
“As commander of the International Security Assistance Force, nothing is more important than the safety and protection of the Afghan people,” he said in the taped address, released in versions dubbed into the two official languages, Dari and Pashto. “I take this possible loss of life or injury to innocent Afghans very seriously.” He later made a brief personal tour of the site in Kunduz, a once-safe northern province where fighters have stepped up attacks and seized control of remote areas, part of an insurgency that is now at its fiercest stage in the eight-year-old war.
A NATO team began an official investigation Saturday amid a clamor from European leaders for answers, with some calling the airstrike a “tragedy” and “a big mistake” that must be investigated.
“From what I have seen today and going to the hospital, it’s clear to me that there were some civilians that were harmed at the site,” McChrystal told reporters in Kunduz.
In the village of Yaqoubi, a scattering of mud-brick homes near the blast site, residents wept and prayed beside dozens of graves of victims on Saturday, while Taleban fighters with rifles looked on. The militants’ presence was proof of their increasing domination of an area recently under government control. “We will take revenge. A lot of innocent people were killed here,” one of the Taleban fighters, only his eyes left uncovered by a thick scarf, said at the funeral.
“Every family around here has victims,” said Sahar Gul, a 54-year-old village elder from Yaqoubi. “There are entire families that have been destroyed.”
Village elders said 50 people were buried in Yaqoubi and 70 more in nearby villages, although Afghan officials and the Red Cross say the precise death toll may never be known.
