Up to 80 Taliban rebels and at least 16 civilians were killed on Monday during a coalition air and ground attack on a village in southern Afghanistan, officials and witnesses said.
The United States-led coalition said it called in war planes after troops who were trying to capture insurgents in Kandahar province came under fire, while a governor said some of the militants had hidden in local people’s houses.
Bloodied men, women and children who streamed into a nearby hospital, using vehicles that withstood the bombing, said dozens of civilians died and scores more were wounded.
The air strike came amid some of the worst violence since the 2001 fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. About 300 people have been killed in the past week, about twice the number reported killed in Iraq.
“Coalition forces conducted a significant operation early this morning in the Kandahar region near the village of Azizi that resulted in the unconfirmed deaths of possibly up to 80 Taliban members,” a coalition statement said.
There were 20 confirmed deaths among “active members of the Taliban network” and 60 unconfirmed fatalities in the operation, the third in the area in a week.
“The purpose of this morning’s operation was to detain individuals suspected of terrorist and anti-Afghanistan activities. However, during the operation, coalition forces encountered organised armed opposition,” it said.
“Ground and close air-support assets engaged the extremists, who were firing on coalition troops and endangering innocent civilians,” the statement added.
The coalition said it was investigating reports of civilian deaths. Its troops “only targeted armed resistance, compounds and buildings known to harbor extremists”, the statement said.
Kandahar provincial Governor Asadullah Khalid told reporters that at least 16 civilians were killed and 15 wounded in the attack.
“There were reports that the Taliban were in this village, but when the US planes started bombardment the Taliban used the people’s houses as a front — that’s why there were civilian casualties,” Khalid said at the main hospital in Kandahar city, 35km east of the bombed area.
An elderly man, Attah Mohammad, said at the hospital that 24 members of his family, including some children, were killed in the bombing. “They started to bomb our village at midnight and continued up to this morning,” he said.
A doctor said security forces had not allowed ambulances into the sealed-off area to fetch the wounded.
An 18-year-old with wounds to his face and chest said there had been Taliban in the village, but they disappeared when the bombs started to fall. “One hit my house. I was wounded and my two brothers were killed,” said the teenager, named Azizullah, adding he had seen scores of dead and wounded on his way to the hospital.
A 45-year-old man named Nasratullah said he had been having dinner with his in-laws. “Suddenly the bombardment started — there was a big fire in our place. I managed to escape but I don’t know what happened to my in-laws,” he said.
There have been several major battles with insurgents during the past week, including a clash in Panjwayi last Wednesday and Thursday that Khalid said left 100 Taliban dead. Insurgents also carried out three suicide bombings.
Separately, Afghan and coalition forces said on Monday they had arrested a mid-level Taliban leader who was a rebel commander for Helmand province, during an operation on Friday in neighbouring Uruzgan province.
Mullah Mohibullah was responsible for a Taliban ambush on Friday that killed one US soldier and wounded several others, it said.
Police reported that a former governor of Paktika province was found dead after being kidnapped on Sunday. Previous such killings have been claimed by Taliban insurgents.
About 250 Taliban fighters have been killed since Wednesday, according to Afghan authorities and the coalition. Nearly 50 other Afghans have been killed, most of them police and soldiers, as well as four foreign soldiers.
Scores of Afghan civilians have been killed by coalition bombing raids since US-led forces toppled the Taliban. — AFP