KABUL, 8 July 2007 — Scores of rebels and a dozen local police and soldiers were killed in an upsurge of fighting in Afghanistan in the past two days that also left scores of civilians dead, officials said yesterday.
About 25 civilians were killed in airstrikes that hit a home late Thursday and then a funeral on Friday in a remote area of mountainous northeastern Kunar province, a local deputy police chief said.
NATO and US airstrikes have killed scores of Afghan civilians this week, residents and officials said yesterday, deaths likely to deepen discontent with foreign forces and the Western-backed Afghan government. NATO-led and US forces said there were heavy clashes in Farah province in western Afghanistan and Kunar, and that troops in both places had called for air support.
Several residents and the head of a district council in Farah said an air attack in the Bala Boluk area had killed 108 civilians. “Women and children have been killed and 13 houses destroyed,” said Bala Boluk council head Haji Khudairam.
“In the bombing, in total, 108 civilians have been killed.” “We are asking the government to send a delegation to see for itself the civilian deaths,” said Faizullah, a resident. The governor and police chief for Farah province both declined to confirm or deny the reports of civilian deaths.
Some 20 “enemies” were also killed, Kunar province deputy police chief Abdul Sabur Alayar told AFP. A resident said up to 35 civilians were killed. The International Security Assistance Force commanded by NATO confirmed the airstrikes but cast doubt on civilian deaths. Instead the force said the strikes were believed to have killed a “significant number” of insurgents.
The strikes were called in against “positively identified enemy firing positions, including a hostile compound,” ISAF spokesman John Thomas said. “We have no evidence of civilian casualties,” Maj. Thomas said.
“We don’t have any reason to think there was a funeral going on and that we struck a group of civilians,” he said. The Afghan Interior Ministry said it would send a team to investigate. “It is not clear yet what happened,” Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP. ISAF and its partner, the US-led coalition, are sensitive to civilian casualties after being rebuked by President Hamid Karzai and Western officials for killing too many people in their operations against the Taleban.
New fighting raged yesterday in the southern province of Helmand, adjacent to Kandahar where four Canadian soldiers were lightly wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded on a patrol convoy early in the morning. ISAF said it saw at least two Taleban rockets fall on a civilian compound in Helmand but it gave no details of casualties or damage, with the clashes still under way.
About 600 civilians have been killed in insurgency-linked violence this year, according to figures used by the United Nations, around half by Afghan and foreign troops.
Foreign attack aircraft were also dispatched Friday to battles in Farah province in the west, where estimates yesterday of the rebel dead ranged from more than 30 to 60. Aircraft were also sent into a battle in southern Uruzgan, where the defense ministry said Friday 33 rebels were killed.
The fighting in Farah erupted when Taleban insurgents ambushed a police escort for a government delegation heading to one of the province’s most volatile areas to discuss security with local tribal chiefs, an official said.
Eleven policemen were killed, making it one of the deadliest ambushes against the police force, which is frequently targeted by the insurgents.
Afghan forces on the ground called for help, provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang told AFP.
“A compound from where the police was attacked was bombed. Up to 60 Taleban were killed,” he said. “There were no civilian casualties.” The US-led coalition said more than 30 insurgents were killed.
Fighting to end the Taleban’s Al-Qaeda-backed insurgency has intensified this summer, with major battles across the country and an insurgent campaign of suicide and other bombings spreading into previously calm areas.
The unrelenting violence is wearing down a population that had high hopes after the Taleban were toppled in late 2001 and the world rushed to help lift Afghanistan out of the chaos that allowed Al-Qaeda to thrive.
