KHOST, Afghanistan, 19 April 2006 — US troops injured a newborn baby girl, her mother, a boy of six and three other Afghan civilians when they fired at vehicles that ignored orders to stop, local police said yesterday. Separately, coalition soldiers killed five suspected militants as the US-led force pushed on with its biggest anti-insurgent operation this year in increasingly restive Afghanistan, the US military said.
The mother, baby and two other women were returning home from a clinic in the eastern province of Khost where she had just given birth late on Monday, police chief Mohammed Ayoob said. US soldiers fired at the car when it did not halt, hitting the mother in the chest and leaving the other women with bullet wounds, Ayoob added. He had no details of the baby’s injury. “They are our neighbors. The villagers are very angry about it,” said witness Esmatullah. “This is not the first time that the US forces have attacked civilians. We’re very angry.”
Also in Khost, US soldiers yesterday fired at a lorry, which refused to halt at a checkpoint and injured the driver and six-year-old boy, Ayoob said. The incidents came three days after coalition forces killed seven civilians during a gunbattle with suspected Taleban militants in the eastern province of Kunar. Kunar is the scene of the coalition’s “Operation Mountain Lion,” in which hundreds of foreign troops backed by more than 1,000 Afghan soldiers have been hunting rebels since last Wednesday. Five insurgents were killed by coalition forces in Kunar on Monday, it said in a statement.
“Coalition forces continued to improve security in Kunar Province late yesterday, killing five terrorists after a patrol spotted seven enemy fighters maneuvering in the open west of Asadabad,” the military said in a statement.
Separately, the coalition said civilians helped thwart two attacks on Monday. A coalition attack helicopter working on a tip-off destroyed two rockets which were set on a timer and pointed at a US-led base in southeastern Paktika province, the statement said. Earlier in Nangarhar province, which borders Kunar to the south, a local civilian led coalition troops to an unearthed, Russian-made 100mm anti-tank round, which the statement described as a “would-be bomb.”
