UN probes deadly airstrike

Reports that 14 killed were family ‘credible’

KUNDUZ, AFGHANISTAN • Fourteen members of a family, including three small children, were killed in northern Afghanistan when a U.S. airstrike destroyed their home, several Afghan officials confirmed Friday.

In what has become a familiar litany, particularly in Taliban-dominated Kunduz province, Afghan and U.S. officials had initially denied that any civilians had been killed in the strike Thursday, claiming the victims were Taliban fighters.

Then 11 bodies belonging to women and children appeared at the hospital in Kunduz City, about 6.5 kilometres from the site of the attack in Chardara district. The Taliban do not have women fighters and the children were very young.

Soon after the attack, district officials described the incident as an airstrike that went wrong, in which only civilians were killed. “There were 12 killed and one wounded by American jets in Chardara district, and all casualties are civilians,” said Abdul Karim, the local police chief. Two other children were later counted as dead because they were known to have been in the house, although their remains could not be found in the rubble, residents and relatives said.

On Friday, the United Nations office in Kabul called the reports “credible” and said it was investigating.

Farther from the scene, however, military officials dismissed the possibility of civilian fatalities.

The executive officer of an Afghan army unit on the front line in Chardara did not mince words. “It is propaganda by the enemy,” the officer, Maj. Saifuddin Azizi of the 10th commando battalion, said. “We deny there were any civilian casualties. Foreign troops are our friends and we don’t target civilians. When the foreign troops decide to attack somewhere, first of all they check everything and then they launch the operation.”

In Kabul, Lt. Col. Martin L. O’Donnell, a U.S. military spokesman, was also unequivocal. “U.S. forces did conduct strikes in support of Afghan-led ground operations in Chardara district, Kunduz province,” O’Donnell said in an email. “An on-the-ground assessment of those strikes reveals no indications they caused civilian casualties.”

By late Thursday, however, provincial authorities in Kunduz had begun to change their accounts, as angry relatives besieged their offices.

Mohammad Radmanish, the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense in Kabul, said that it had been an Afghan operation against terrorists.

Later, the Ministry of Defense circulated a statement acknowledging that civilians had been killed and wounded in the attack.