US blamed for killing civilians in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Local Afghan officials blamed the U.S. military for two airstrikes this week that killed 29 people, most of them women and children, in heavy fighting in southern Helmand province, even as U.S. diplomats negotiated possible peace terms with the Taliban.

The reaction followed a familiar pattern in the long history of disputed airstrikes in Afghanistan, with the U.S. military denying that the second airstrike even occurred while confirming that the first was under investigation. The United Nations called the civilian casualty reports “credible.”

In Doha, Qatar, where the U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad was in the fifth day of peace negotiations Friday, Taliban negotiators accused the U.S. military of stepping up airstrikes to pressure them to make a deal.

“Killing innocent people, with their women and children, is a great concern to us,” said a senior member of the Taliban reached by telephone in Pakistan. “We raised the issue with Khalilzad.”

The official said deadly tactics would not work.

“The more they kill, the more our blood will turn hot,” he said.

The Taliban, meanwhile, have announced that one of their founding leaders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, will serve as the new chief negotiator in the high-level talks that have reached a critical stage. The appointment indicated that the Taliban are taking negotiations seriously, according to Western diplomats and Afghan officials.

Baradar is known as a longtime, powerful lieutenant to the Taliban’s founding supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.