NATO - Civilian Casualties 'Possible'

I like the word 'possible' in this NATO statement as if such a thing were unthinkable:-


KABUL (Reuters) – NATO-led forces acknowledged on Sunday there could have been civilian casualties in an air strike this month that wounded an Afghan election candidate and was strongly condemned by Afghanistan's president. Civilian casualties caused by foreign forces hunting militants have long been a major cause of tension between Afghan President HamidKarzai and his Western allies.

On September 2, Karzai condemned an air strike in northern Takhar province which he said killed 10 campaign workers for a candidate in Afghanistan's September 18 parliamentary election.

He said the election candidate was also wounded in the strike, which happened the same day U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates landed in Kabul for unannounced talks. The pair appeared to disagree over the incident at a news conference.

At the time, Gates and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the target had been a senior member of the al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

On Sunday, ISAF said that an assessment team of officials from ISAF and Afghanistan's interior and defense ministries had concluded the IMU leader was in the vehicle hit in the strike "but could not rule out thepossibility of civilian casualties"."We are very confident that the targeted individual was in the vehicle struck by the air weapons team and was killed," Italian Army Brigadier General Luigi Scollo said in a statement released by ISAF.

"The question remains why an election official or candidate was traveling with a known terrorist," he said.

ISAF said the air strike had hit one vehicle traveling in a six car convoy and that an IMU senior member it identified as Muhammad Amin had been killed. A Taliban commander and other armed passengers had been in the vehicle, it said.

"Initial media reports indicated the vehicle struck was part of an election party," the ISAF statement said. "However, after reviewing the air weapons system video, the team saw no evidence of political campaign material on the outside of the vehicle."

It described the air strike as "selective, surgical and legitimate". (our comment - 'yeah, sure').