Villagers, Including A Large Number of Children Burned Beyond Recognition.
Kunduz, Afghanistan - A district governor in northern Afghanistan said Monday that more than 130 people were killed in a NATO airstrike last week that struck two hijacked fuel trucks. A Taliban spokesman invited United Nations and other human rights groups to visit the area and to investigate the incident. Friday's airstrike conducted by US planes was ordered by a German military commander when a large crowd of people was observed through satellite images gathering around the two trucks stuck in a riverbed in the Chardarah district in Kunduz province. 'According to interviews that we did with local people and tribal elders, 107 people were killed in Omerkhel and Gul Bagh villages of the province,' Abdul Wahid Omarkhel, the Chardarah district governor, told the German Press Agency. He said 15 other people, who had come from neighbouring Baghlan province, were also killed in the blast. More than a dozen people were also killed from the Ali Abad district, according to information Omarkhel said he had received from that district. He could not say how many of the victims were civilians, but said a large number of children, aged 10 to 16, were among those killed.
The airstrike came two months after the new NATO commander for Afghanistan, US general Stanley McChrystal ordered the allied forces in Afghanistan make protecting Afghan civilians the centerpiece of their war strategy. McChrystal visited the site one day after the incident and ordered an investigation by NATO military personnel. Afghan police and German military have issued now discredited denials that civilians were killed in the incident.
Even Afghan President Hamid Karzai fiercely criticized the attack. "What a miscalculation! More than 90 dead for a simple fuel tanker that was stuck in a river bed," Karzai told the French newspaper Le Figaro. "Why didn't they send ground troops to get the tankers back?" He said General McChrystal had rung him to apologize and had said that he didn't order the attack.
ReplyDelete