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A boy, injured during a NATO air strike, lies on a hospital bed in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province |
February 27, 2011
Kabul - An Afghan delegation tasked by President Hamid Karzai to probe a NATO operation said to have resulted in civilian causalities said Sunday it has found that attacks by the alliance killed more than five dozen people in eastern Afghanistan.
"After four days of discussions and interviews with tribal leaders, security officials and other civilians, we found that 65 civilians were killed by NATO missiles in Ghazi Abad district of Kunar province," Shahzada Masood, who headed the delegation, told the German Press Agency dpa.
He said 19 girls ranging in age from 7 months to 18 years were among the dead, along with 21 teenage boys.
"Ten women and 15 elder men were also martyred in the incident," he added.
Most of the civilians were killed during an air strike on a remote village near the Pakistan border, where NATO planes mistook them for insurgents, Masood said.
NATO has launched its own inquiry, dispatching an incident assessment team to Kunar province. Their findings have yet to be announced, but Masood pointed to an already existing disagreement.
"Coalition forces agreed with us on the incident of civilians causalities, but they did not agree with the statistics," he said.
The report of the Afghan inquiry team was submitted to the presidential palace on Sunday. A week earlier, Karzai had condemned the attack and said he had instructed security authorities to once again discuss civilian causalities with NATO forces.
Nearly 150,000 international forces are currently fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan Rights Monitor, a human rights group in Kabul, said in a report earlier this month that US and NATO forces were responsible for 512 civilian deaths in 2010, with at least 217 civilians killed in air strikes.
The source for this report is found at: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1622330.php/Local-inquiry-team-NATO-killed-65-civilians-in-Afghan-operation
The photo at the top is this story is from: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8298454-afghanistan-nato-accused-of-killing-65-civilians
The photo at the top is this story is from: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8298454-afghanistan-nato-accused-of-killing-65-civilians
March 1, 2011
ReplyDeleteI returned to the Afghan mountains today. I saw the heavy-spirited paths trodden out of the muddy snow; and thought of the shaking mother & child needing help home after losing loved ones,
like the 60 plus in Kunar. It may be true that mountains cannot reach mountains, that only Man can reach Man, but we understand each other so meagerly that Man deliberately hurts Man, like Life rejecting Life, us rejecting every mother's prayer. I smiled at [name erased] welcoming me in peace and put my hand on my heart to greet io return... Relearning why we need to walk this path of the People,
I entered my village hut already cleaned and waiting, and cried.
Love,
Hakim in the Afghan Hills
Three journalists were arrested who tried to cover the massacre. More on this at http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8298454-afghanistan-nato-accused-of-killing-65-civilians
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