Government strike kills 14, witnesses say
KABUL — A government air strike killed at least 14 people in Afghanistan’s western Herat province, many of them women and children, witnesses said Thursday.
Hundreds of people had gathered in Herat’s Adraskan district to welcome home a former Taliban fighter freed from jail when aircraft pounded the gathering, said Noor Rahmati, a witness who lost three members of his family in the airstrike.
Government officials said Thursday the air strike a day earlier was being investigated.
Ghulam Nabi had been released as part of a prisoner exchange aimed at moving negotiations between the government and the Taliban forward, a second and critical phase of a peace deal between the U.S. and Taliban.
District elders and well wishers had arrived to welcome Nabi when the attack began, the witnesses said. Nabi’s 9yearold son was apparently wounded in the attack.
U.S. Peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad tweeted a condemnation of the violence and welcomed the government investigation.
The United Nations has been critical of the increasing death toll among civilians in Afghanistan, caused by both sides in the protracted conflict.
The Taliban issued a statement denouncing attacks on Taliban prisoners freed as part of the peace deal. The deal calls for the government to release 5,000 Taliban in jails throughout the country and the insurgent movement to free 1,000 government personnel, including Afghan security forces.
The statement warned that violence against freed prisoners will undermine the deal signed in February and make the job of keeping freed prisoners from returning to the battlefield that much more difficult.
Witness Abdul Khaliq, whose brother Abdullah was in a hospital in Herat with wounds from the attack, said “these victims are not Taliban. They just wanted to meet a relative returning home.“
The U.S.Taliban peace deal was touted as the best hope for peace in Afghanistan after decades of war at the time of its signing on Feb. 29. While the U.S. and NATO have already begun reducing their troop strength, the second phase of the deal — which calls for Afghans on both sides of the conflict to sit at the negotiation table — has been delayed. Much of the delays have been as a result of Kabul’s reluctance to free some Taliban prisoners identified for release as part of the agreement.