KABUL, Afghanistan — At a time of rising public outrage over civilian casualties, Western troops killed three Afghan children and wounded seven other noncombatants in an errant artillery strike on Monday, military officials said.
The timing of the latest instance of civilian deaths and injuries could hardly have been more sensitive. The United Nations, the Afghan government and the U.S. military are investigating allegations that as many as 90 civilians, including 60 children, were killed Aug. 22 in a U.S.-led strike in western Afghanistan. U.S. military officials have said they believe that 25 militants and five civilians died in that raid in Herat province.
The steady drumbeat of casualty reports has eroded the popularity of the already beleaguered government of President Hamid Karzai, who has demanded that Western troops exercise greater caution when operating in civilian areas. After the Herat incident, Karzai demanded a wide-ranging review of Western combat operations.
Further fueling Afghan anger, two other children and their father were killed in a separate incident Monday involving foreign troops near the capital, according to local authorities, but the circumstances of those deaths were less clear.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, acknowledged the deaths of three children in Paktika province without specifying the nationality of the troops involved. Nearly all foreign forces in that area, near the border with Pakistan, are American.
In an unusually swift and unequivocal statement, Western officials accepted responsibility for the casualties, which they said came after insurgents fired on a coalition patrol.
The Western troops called in artillery support in response but tried to halt the strike when they saw that the initial rounds were hitting too close to what appeared to be a civilian compound. But another round had been fired by the time the alarm was raised, the military said.
The three dead children and seven injured civilians were found inside the compound, the ISAF statement said, adding that the coalition “deeply regrets this accident.”
