NATO: 3 civilians accidentally killed in fighting

— Coalition forces accidentally killed three Afghan civilians and wounded four others when mortars it fired missed insurgents and landed near a village, NATO said Saturday.

NATO said in a statement that the deaths occurred Friday when coalition troops came under fire in Pech district of Kunar province.

"When coalition forces returned fire, three or four rounds landed short of the target area, near a village, killing and wounding the civilians," the statement said.

"We take civilian casualties seriously and we do everything within our power to prevent civilian casualties in the course of operations. In this case, we failed," said U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres, director of the NATO operations center in Kabul. "Our thoughts and concerns are with the families of this tragic accident."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly criticized civilian casualties caused by U.S. and NATO operations. He highlighted the importance of reducing civilian deaths at a NATO summit Saturday in Lisbon, Portugal.

The number of Afghan civilians killed or injured in the war soared 31 percent in the first six months of the year, but Taliban bombings and assassinations were largely responsible for the sharp rise, according to the United Nations.

The U.N. said the number of deaths and injuries caused by NATO and Afghan government forces dropped 30 percent compared with the first six months of last year, largely a result of curbs on the use of air power and heavy weapons.

Also in the east, two remote-controlled bombs attached to bicycles exploded about 30 minutes apart Saturday just east of Kabul, killing four people and wounding more than 30, local officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the explosions, saying they were targeting police and Afghan intelligence workers.

Ghulam Aziz Ghranai, the police chief in Laghman province, said the first blast occurred as vehicles were waiting to be searched at a police checkpoint on a road leading into the provincial capital of Mehtarlam.

Deputy provincial governor Edayutullah Qalanderzai, who was at a local hospital, said a woman, a child and an elderly man were killed and 25 others were wounded, including one Afghan policeman.

The second explosion, which killed one and injured eight others, occurred about a half hour later less than a mile from the first blast, Qalanderzai said.

Karzai condemned the attacks in Mehtarlam, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Kabul.

Separately, the Afghan government reported that a senior Taliban commander was killed in an airstrike Saturday in Nad Ali district of Helmand province in the south. The commander was known to have planned bombings and suicide attacks in the area, according to a government statement.

On Friday, Afghan and coalition troops in eastern Afghanistan captured an insurgent believed to have planned suicide attacks for al-Qaida, the Taliban and the al-Qaida linked Haqqani network. The troops tracked him to a compound in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province where he was apprehended.

The Associated Press


