Kandahar, Afghanistan – A U.S.-led nighttime airstrike against Taliban rebels in southern Afghanistan killed up to 80 suspected militants, the coalition said today. The local governor said 16 civilians were killed and 16 wounded.
At a hospital, wounded residents of Azizi village described how aircraft bombed mud-brick homes where Taliban rebels were hiding, having fled there from a religious school after the airstrikes started. Among the wounded was an 8-month-old infant.
In a statement, the coalition said it had confirmed 20 Taliban killed in the attack on the village in Kandahar province late Sunday and early today, while there were “an unconfirmed 60 additional Taliban casualties.” U.S. commander Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry told The Associated Press that the military was “looking into” civilian casualties.
The airstrikes brought the death toll of militants, Afghan forces, coalition soldiers and civilians to as many as 285 since Wednesday, according to coalition and Afghan figures. The storm of violence that erupted last week in the south was among the deadliest combat in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001.
At Mirwaise Hospital in Kandahar city, a man with blood on his clothes and turban said insurgents had been hiding in an Islamic religious school, or madrassa, in the village since the recent fierce fighting.
“Helicopters bombed the madrassa and some of the Taliban ran from there and into people’s homes. Then those homes were bombed,” said Haji Ikhlaf, 40. “I saw 35 to 40 dead Taliban and around 50 dead or wounded civilians.” Another villager, Zurmina Bibi, cradled her wounded 8-month-old.
She said about 10 people were killed in her home, including three or four children.
“There were dead people everywhere,” she said, crying.
A doctor, Mohammed Khan, said he had treated 10 people from the village. Moments later, a pickup vehicle pulled up at the hospital with five wounded men lying in the back.
“These sort of accidents happen during fighting, especially when the Taliban are hiding in homes,” Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid told reporters. “I urge people not to give shelter to the Taliban.” U.S. military spokesman Col. Tom Collins said, “It’s common that the enemy fights in close to civilians as a means to protect its own forces.
“We targeted a Taliban compound and we’re certain we hit the right target,” he told The Associated Press.
It was not possible for reporters to reach Azizi village because police and foreign troops had blocked off the area, about 30 miles southwest of Kandahar.
The village, also known as Hajiyan, has about 30-35 large mud-brick compounds, each housing an extended family with up to 50 members. The village has a mosque and one madrassa, where boys study. It has no electricity and relies on wells for water.
The Taliban resurgence, despite the presence of more than 30,000 foreign troops, including 23,000 from the United States in Afghanistan, has halted postwar reconstruction work in many areas and raised fears for this country’s future.
In other violence, Mohammed Ali Jalali, the former governor of eastern Paktika province, was found dead after being kidnapped Sunday, local police chief Abdul Rehman Surjung said. Jalali was a respected tribal elder and a supporter of President Hamid Karzai.
Meanwhile, a war of words between Islamabad and Kabul over the burst of violence escalated, with Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam saying her country shouldn’t be blamed for the bloodshed.
“The Afghan government’s failure to deal with the situation cannot be placed at Pakistan’s door,” she said at a weekly news conference.
On Sunday, Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told reporters in Kabul that Taliban leaders are in Pakistan and that “the movement and the communication during these terrorist attacks” comes from the Pakistan side of the border.
