Raid said to kill nine civilians

KABUL, Afghanistan — Officials in Afghanistan said Sunday that they were investigating claims that at least nine civilians, including as many as six children, were killed when Afghan and coalition forces blew up a Taliban weapons depot in southern Helmand province.

Omar Zwak, a spokesman for the provincial governor of Helmand, said troops on a joint military operation in the Malgir village area of Gereshk district, just outside the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, had found the cache of munitions late Saturday.

“They set up explosives to detonate the cache, and it damaged the house where the civilians were staying,” Zwak said.

Rasoul Zazia, spokesman for the army in Helmand, confirmed the operation carried out late Saturday night.

Capt. Bill Salvin, a spokesman for the coalition in Afghanistan, said Sunday: “We have seen the reports of civilian casualties in southern Helmand last night. We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously, and we will convene an inquiry into this allegation.”

Gen. Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said investigators had been sent to Helmand to investigate the claims.

The owner of the house that collapsed, Haji Mohammed Sadiq, said it was being used by a family that had been taking care of his farm for him since he moved to Lashkar Gah to escape the fighting. The concrete building next door housed a clinic before the Taliban moved in, Sadiq said.

“Last night, Afghan forces, along with foreign forces, raided the clinic around 11:30 p.m., and arrested some 40 to 50 villagers, and took them to the desert, and only left women and children in the houses,” he said Sunday. “They put explosives over the clinic and detonated it, and the mud house next to the clinic collapsed.”

Sadiq said he rushed to the scene in the morning but that the police had not initially let any civilians near the collapsed house. When the civilians were finally allowed to approach, he said, they pulled nine bodies from the debris, including two adults, their daughter-in-law and six grandchildren. One child was unaccounted for, Sadiq said.

Of the family, Sadiq said, “the only person who survived is the son who had gone to Herat province for work.”

However, two provincial officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media, said only two of the nine victims were children. They said the others were three women and four men from a single family.

Civilians have continued to bear the brunt of much of the violence from both sides in Helmand, with many repeatedly displaced by the fighting. According to residents, U.S. bombings in the Sangin district killed at least 22 civilians in February. The NATO mission to Afghanistan said it was investigating the deaths.

The war is expected to escalate this spring as the portion of Helmand controlled by the Afghan government continues to shrink. According to provincial leaders, the Taliban now hold seven of the 14 districts that make up the province, the country’s largest in land area. The Afghan government fully controls only two districts and the provincial capital; the remaining five are contested, with the government generally controlling only the district centers.