THE Afghan government says 52 civilians, including women and children, died when a NATO rocket struck a village in southern Afghanistan – a report disputed by the international coalition yesterday.
The allegation was raised as the founder of WikiLeaks claimed thousands of US attacks could be investigated for evidence of war crimes, and as Amnesty International alleged that NATO had an “incoherent process” for dealing with civilian casualties.
Some of the more than 90,000 secret US military documents on the Afghanistan war posted on Sunday on the web by WikiLeaks included unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings.
A statement by President Hamid Karzai’s office said an investigation by Afghan intelligence determined that a NATO rocket slammed into a village in the Sangin district of Helmand province last Friday.
Mr Karzai called on the US-led alliance to make protection of civilians their priority.
The US-led command said a joint NATO-Afghan investigation into the alleged attack “has thus far revealed no evidence of civilians injured or killed”. Investigators determined that NATO and Afghan troops came under attack on Friday about 10km south of the village and responded with helicopter strikes, the statement said.
Last Saturday, a man named Abdul Ghafaar said he brought seven children to a hospital in Kandahar after getting caught in the crossfire in Sangin the day before. Another man, Marjan Agha, said villagers were walking with a white flag towards NATO forces when shots rang out and two people were killed.
Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange suggested the number of civilian casualties was being underplayed.
Meanwhile, one of two US servicemen missing in Afghanistan since last week has been confirmed dead and his body recovered, a NATO spokesman said yesterday.
The Taliban has said previously it killed one in a firefight and captured the other.
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