Afghan confidence in Western military forces was further frayed on Monday when a United States air strike on a house near Kabul killed nine people spanning four generations of the same family.
US warplanes dropped two 900kg bombs on the house in Kapisa province, just north of Kabul, hours after an attack on a nearby US base. The apparent mistake came a day after American Special Forces opened fire on civilians on a busy road in eastern Afghanistan, killing up to 10 and wounding many more.
The mounting death toll is causing an uproar in a country that has suffered many civilian casualties since US-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001. Last December President Hamid Karzai wept as he pleaded with Western troops to avoid unnecessary deaths.
Reporters at the scene of the Kapisa bombing said the bombs had pulverised the main house in a compound of five buildings. Gulam Nabi, a relative of the victims, said four children aged between six months and five-years-old had been killed.
The US military said it had fired on the house because two men who had just fired a rocket on the US-run Nato base were seen running into the compound.
“These men knowingly endangered civilians by retreating into a populated area while conducting attacks against coalition forces,” said spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel David Accetta.
News of the bombing came as tensions were still high over Sunday’s incident in eastern Nangarhar province, when a convoy of Marine Special Forces made a frenzied escape from the scene of a suicide bomb attack.
Witnesses said the Americans indiscriminately opened fire on passersby and vehicles halted on the side of the road. The US military said its troops had fired in self defence after coming under fire from several directions in a pre-planned ambush.
Several witnesses and provincial officials disputed that explanation, insisting that there had been no incoming fire.
On Monday tribal elders visited the scene of the shooting as part of an official investigation launched by Karzai. However, suspicions of a cover-up were fanned by reports that US soldiers had censored photos and video footage of the aftermath of the violence.
US officials often boast of a free local press as one of their achievements in Afghanistan over the past five years. Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 100 Afghan civilians died as a result of Nato and coalition assaults in 2006. – Guardian Unlimited Â