AFGHANISTAN: Afghan police: 3 civilians die in coalition strike
Posted by warvictims on September 28, 2008
By RAHIM FAIEZ
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan police official said Sunday that a U.S.-led coalition operation apparently targeting a suicide bomb cell in eastern Afghanistan killed three civilians.
However, the claim was disputed by the coalition, which said its troops killed two al-Qaida militants.
Elsewhere, insurgents killed a woman in charge of female police officers.
Gen. Abdul Jalal Jalal, the provincial police chief in the eastern province of Kunar, said airstrikes hit a compound in the province’s Asmar district, killing three civilians.
The U.S.-led coalition said its troops targeted an al-Qaida cell network responsible for a number of bomb attacks in Kunar province.
The coalition said two militants were killed after a fire-fight in one of the compounds. It said no civilians were killed. Capt. Scott Miller, a U.S. spokesman, said artillery strikes were used in the fight but no airstrikes.
It was impossible to independently verify either report, due to the remoteness of the area.
Civilian deaths is a highly sensitive topic in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai has long pleaded with international troops to avoid civilian deaths in its operations.
The Afghan government and United Nations say an Aug. 22 U.S. operation killed some 90 civilians in the western province of Herat, a strike that strained U.S.-Afghan relations.
An original U.S. investigation found that up to 35 militants and seven civilians were killed in that strike. But a new investigation was opened — and is now under way — after video images emerged appearing to show many more dead than the U.S. had acknowledged.
In other violence, two gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed the woman police officer in charge of female police in the southern province of Kandahar, said Zalmai Ayubi, the governor’s spokesman.
Malalai Kakar, 41, was traveling from her home to the office Sunday when she was shot, he said. Her son, 18, was wounded in the attack, he said.
Militants frequently attack projects, schools and businesses run by women. The hard-line Taliban regime, which was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, did not allow women outside the home without a male escort.
The European Union said it was “appalled by the brutal targeting” of Kakar.
“Any murder of a police officer is to be condemned, but the killing of a female officer whose service was not only to her country, but to Afghan women, to whom Ms. Kakar served as an example, is particularly abhorrent,” the EU said in a statement.
Source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hvWEqwq3CrRvaQCmt21MfoYhjZJQD93FM7N80
