27 March 2009

Khost Province police chief Abdul Qayum Bagzoi reported this morning that US forces had killed two innocent farmers just outside of Khost city. The attack came just days after an attack by US forces in Kunduz Province killed five civilians inside the home of a local mayor.

Once again, US officials have denied that those killed were civilians, yet the case against those killed seems remarkably weak. US spokesman Col. Greg Julian reports that the patrol saw two "military-aged males" digging outside after curfew. They were then killed. Col. Julian declared that "they were not civilians to the best of our knowledge."

The rising death toll across Afghanistan is complicating President Obama's attempt to present a new "comprehensive strategy" for the war there, and the government's objections to repeated killings by the international forces in driving a rift between the two.

US-led raid kills five Afghan civilians: officials

Afghan officials said five men killed in a US-led raid Sunday were all civilians, countering a statement from the military that said they were militants from a "terrorist network."

The claim was the latest in a string of allegations of civilian casualties at the hands of foreign forces who are in Afghanistan to fight against insurgents, including Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists.

"Afghan and coalition forces killed five militants and detained four suspected militants early this morning in Kunduz province during an operation targeting a terrorist network in northern Afghanistan, " the US military said.

The operation took place near the border with Tajikistan, it said.

But provincial police chief Abdul Rehman Actash said the five men killed were civilians visiting a district mayor.

"They went into the mayor's house and killed his driver, two guards, his cook and a guest from Sari Pul province, and confiscated two weapons from the house," Actash told AFP.

He said police did not know the target of the attack, contradicting the US statement that the operation was carried out in coordination with local police.

District mayors are the people in charge of local reconstruction.

Afghanistan' s interior ministry also said the dead were civilians and that it had sent a delegation to the area to investigate the incident. ...