KABUL: An early morning NATO airstrike in Afghanistan’s eastern Logar province killed five Afghan soldiers on Thursday, Defense Ministry officials said. The coalition said the deaths were an accident and expressed its condolences.
NATO said the Afghan soldiers were “accidentally killed,” without specifying whether it was the result of an airstrike.
Unusually reticent, Afghan President Hamid Karzai did not immediately condemn the international troops, telling reporters during a state visit to Sri Lanka that the incident is being investigated.
“This attack, NATO has admitted to me they did it mistakenly. We will investigate the issue and then speak about it,” Karzai said. He added that he would speak much differently, presumably in harsher tones, if he were addressing reporters in his own country.
Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said the strike occurred in the province’s Chakh district, and that eight Afghan National Army troops were also wounded in the incident. The ministry’s helicopters ferried the wounded to Kabul, he told The Associated Press.
Azimi said an investigation was underway and that authorities “were saddened by the incident.”
A spokeswoman for the international forces in Afghanistan, Maj. Cathleen Snow, described the killings as an “unfortunate incident” during an operation in the country’s east.
She said an investigation was being conducted to determine the circumstances that led to the deaths.
Karzai’s brother exits Afghan election
The brother of President Karzai dropped out of Afghanistan’s election on Thursday and endorsed former foreign minister Zalmai Rassoul, an announcement seen as signalling the current leader’s preferred successor.
Relations between the US and Afghanistan have become severely strained as NATO combat troops prepare to withdraw by the end of this year.
The new president faces a testing term in office as the final 55,000 NATO troops depart and the national army and police are left to fight the Taleban insurgency alone, 13 years after the militants were ousted from power.
“I and my team, we consider ourselves as a key part of this new alliance and declare my support for Doctor Zalmai Rassoul,” Qayum Karzai, a businessman who spent much of his earlier life in the US, told a press conference.
Rassoul, a softly-spoken loyalist of Hamid Karzai, said: “From now on, both teams will fight for victory... and I’m sure, with the blessing of God, and the support of the people, we will win.”
President Karzai, who is constitutionally barred from standing again after serving two terms, has pledged not to publicly endorse any candidate.
“I do see this as a sign that Rassoul is Karzai’s preferred choice,” Kate Clark, of the Afghan Analysts Network, told AFP. “Karzai has been very keen publicly to say he has not been supporting anyone, but Karzai loyalists have been backing Rassoul.”
One senior diplomat told AFP that Rassoul’s campaign was being “propelled” by President Karzai.
“I encouraged him to withdraw,” President Karzai told reporters on a visit to Sri Lanka, speaking of his brother.
Five Afghan soldiers killed in NATO airstrike
