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US-led Forces Confirm Killing Afghan Civilians
KABUL - U.S.-led coalition troops killed eight Afghan civilians in an air strike in the western province of Farah during a Tuesday raid against suspected militants, the U.S. military said.
The acknowledgement came as reports of more civilian deaths caused by a fresh air raid by foreign forces emerged on Thursday from the neighboring province of Herat.
Tuesday's air strike was summoned after a coalition convoy came under sustained attack from machine gun and indirect fire from a number of houses adjacent to a road in the Bakwa district of Farah, the U.S. military said.
"The coalition convoy returned fire and called for close air support on the enemy positions. A house was hit; eight civilians were killed, two others injured," it said in a statement late on Wednesday.
"Coalition forces never intentionally target non-combatants, and deeply regret any occurrence such as this where civilians are killed and injured as a result of insurgent activity and actions," it said.
Afghan officials said nine people, all members of the same family were killed in Tuesday's bombing.
In Thursday's raid, at least four men were killed, a spokesman for the regional police command said. Witnesses said 17 people were also wounded and taken to hospital.
The U.S. military said the raid was against "high priority Taliban targets" in Herat, adding two "Taliban leaders" and "significant number of other insurgents were also killed".
In a statement, it said, there was no evidence of civilian casualties.
The issue of civilian casualties is highly sensitive one for the Western-backed government and undermines Afghan support for the presence of foreign forces who are fighting the Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan.
There has been a sharp rise in violence in Afghanistan this year, the bloodiest since U.S.-led and Afghan forces overthrew the hardline Taliban in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The U.S. military says it is investigating reports by Afghan officials that around 60 civilians were killed in two separate air strikes by U.S.-led coalition forces this month in eastern Afghanistan.
More than 800 civilians have been killed since the start of 2007 in Afghanistan by foreign and Afghan forces, according to Afghan officials and the U.N.
Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Valerie Lee
©2008 Reuters
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Show AllPerhaps this holds true for Afghanistan, too.
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Perhaps it is Time to Break the Wheel
Blood, burned bodies hanging.
Outrage! Revenge! Barbarians! Savages!
Kill them until they surrender!
Give them no quarter!
Music to Bush and Company's ears,
This cry for revenge and destruction.
If this is the people's mood,
His forces may kill at will.
What of the Iraqi, holding a burned body,
That represents his hopes and dreams?
He sits on the ground before a burned out home,
Cradling wife or child and watching the soldiers.
What may be passing through his mind?
Outrage! Revenge! Barbarians! Savages!
Kill them until they surrender!
Give them no quarter!
Thus is this horror perpetuated
In war after war, year after year,
From Richard CÅ“ur De Lyon
To the current tragic bloodbath.
Steve Osborn
10 April 2004
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Let us all work to end this madness.
Another family murdered and maimed in Afghanistan, Pakestan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, West Bank and no accounting, no prison, no justice. And yet, I read how outraged our Israeli Jews are when one of their prisoners is released after 40 years for doing less.
Bush hands out a handful of Bush Bucks and calls it even. Maybe Hezbollah should send Ehud Olmert a fist full of sheckels, in a plain brown envelope, and call it square.
Justice is a bad joke.
The same eternal justification of the genocidal violence of the US: our genocidal violence is ONLY A RESPONSE OR REACTION. This can be noticed even in the atrocities of the US police force against the innocent civilians. The main-stream media interprets these atrocities as THE RESPONSE OR REACTION OF THE POLICE.
Three children, who are Kuchis, the nomads of Afghanistan have been hit by Nato bombs, American or British, and nurses are trying to peel away their roasted skin with tweezers. On the night of 10 June, NATO planes struck again, killing at least 30 civilians in a single village: children, women, schoolteachers, students. On 4 July, another 22 civilians died like this. All, including the roasted children, are described as "militants" or "suspected Taliban".
What is evident is: at the heart of the US project of "war of terrorism" is a desire to avoid accountability for what they want to do. Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and extraordinary renditions are part of the same struggle to avoid accountability. The victims of this American genocidal violence are innocent men, women (yound and old), and children.
Ex-Unocal Lobbyist and US lackey Karzai blames the Pakistani ISI for the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul last week.
Since then the US/Nato is Bombing/Killing Pakistani Civilians in "HUGE NUMBERS" according to tribal elders.
Since last week's bombing is potentiating increased US incursions into Pakistan, A US objective,
Question? Who benefited from the bombing in Kabul? Answer; US tactical, even strategic objectives.
These dots can be connected with worn crayons held by blinded Afghan children.