US looks into killings of Afghan civilians
KABUL, Afghanistan - As the Red Cross confirmed yesterday that dozens of civilians had been killed in US air strikes in an isolated district in western Afghanistan, provincial authorities suggested the toll could reach 100. Weeping villagers dug mass graves.
The incident, which appeared to be the most lethal episode in many months involving Afghan civilians accidentally killed by Western forces, cast a pall over President Hamid Karzai's first meeting in Washington with President Obama. Karzai, in a statement issued by the presidential palace in Kabul, called the deaths "unacceptable."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States "deeply regrets" the loss of life, but the American military said it has not yet determined who was responsible.
Although accounts remained sketchy, some new details emerged yesterday about the fatalities in the district of Bala Baluk in the western province of Farah. The deaths took place during clashes on Monday between coalition troops and Taliban fighters.
The US military, which has sometimes infuriated Afghans by appearing slow to respond to reports of civilian casualties, swiftly dispatched a team to the scene. A brigadier general was taking part in the probe, said Army Colonel Gregory Julian, the chief spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan.
Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross also traveled to the area, and a spokeswoman in Kabul, Jessica Barry, said yesterday there was little doubt that dozens of those killed in two locations were noncombatants. Many of the bodies seen being pulled from the rubble were those of women, children and elderly men, she said.
