KABUL, Afghanistan — A fierce new dispute erupted Saturday over civilian deaths in Afghanistan, with village elders asserting that as many as 22 noncombatants, including women and children, were killed in an American-led raid and U.S. military officials insisting all 15 dead, including a woman, were Taliban fighters.
The U.S. military said it would carry out a joint investigation with Afghan authorities beginning today.
Civilian casualties are one of the most serious points of friction between Western forces and the increasingly unpopular government of President Hamid Karzai.
The Afghan leader repeatedly has accused coalition troops of failing to safeguard civilians during combat operations, while commanders accuse the Taliban of deliberately putting innocents in harm’s way. Karzai’s latest public plea for restraint by Western forces came only hours before President Barack Obama was sworn in Tuesday.
Like many such disputed incidents, this latest one took place in the dead of night in a remote location and involved the use of air power by American-led troops.
Saturday’s raid took place between 3 and 4 a.m. in the Mehtar Lam district of Laghman province, about 40 miles northeast of Kabul.
American and other coalition troops have focused their efforts lately on securing several provinces adjoining Kabul, after attacks close to the city last year left many Afghans with the sense that insurgents were tightening a noose around the capital.
A statement by the U.S. military said the early-morning strike targeted a Taliban commander “known to traffic foreign fighters and weapons into the region.” As coalition troops approached his compound, the statement said, they came under fire from “multiple directions” by militants armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
Village elders provided a much different account to provincial officials, saying there were no Taliban in the area, which they described as a hamlet populated mainly by shepherds.
