Kandahar, Afghanistan – More than 100 people, including militants, civilians and police, have died in three days of fierce clashes between NATO forces and Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Monday.
Some preliminary estimates of the death toll exceeded 200 people, but precise numbers were not immediately available because of the continued fighting in Uruzgan province.
In eastern Afghanistan, U.S.- led coalition jets bombed a compound suspected of housing al-Qaeda militants, killing seven boys and several insurgents, officials said.
A senior Afghan Defense Ministry official has said that civilian deaths are the main concern of Afghans, and President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly called for foreign troops to do more to prevent civilian casualties.
Mullah Ahmidullah Khan, the head of Uruzgan’s provincial council, said the clashes in the Chora district had killed 60 civilians, 70 suspected Taliban militants and 16 Afghan police.
An official close to the Uruzgan governor, who asked not to be identified when talking about preliminary estimates, said 70 to 75 civilians had been killed or wounded, while more than 100 Taliban and more than 35 police had been killed.
Lt. Col. Maria Carl, a spokeswoman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, said there is “definitely a large engagement that has been going on there” for the past three days.
She could not confirm casualty figures.
On Sunday in Paktika province, in an operation backed by Afghan troops, the warplanes targeted a compound that also contained a mosque and a madrassa, or Islamic school, resulting in the death of seven boys.
Paktika Gov. Akram Akhpelwak said there normally is strong coordination between the government and the coalition and NATO, but that he was not made aware of the missile strike on the madrassa beforehand.
Coalition troops had “surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications there were children inside the building,” said Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition spokesman. He accused the militants of not letting the children leave the compound that was targeted.
“If we knew that there were children inside the building, there was no way that that airstrike would have occurred,” said Sgt. 1st Class Dean Welch, another coalition spokesman.
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said it has sent a team with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission to investigate.
