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| Afghan leader urges Obama to end civilian casualties |
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Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 5-Nov-2008 21:09 hrs |
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| Barack Obama shakes hands with a US soldier during a visit to Afghanistan in July 2008. President Hamid Karzai has urged Obama to end civilian casualties in the "war on terror" in Afghanistan as claims came in of villagers killed in air strikes on insurgents. |
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President Hamid Karzai urged US president-elect Barack Obama to end civilian casualties in the "war on terror" in Afghanistan as claims came in of villagers killed in air strikes on insurgents.. Karzai said Obama's election as the first black US president heralded a new world era, and hoped his own country could one day overcome its ethnic divisions.. But he immediately raised his nation's concern about the mounting number of ordinary Afghans killed in international military action against the extremist Taliban militia driven from government in a US-led invasion in 2001.. "My first demand from the US president, when he takes office, would be to end civilian casualties in Afghanistan and take the war to places where there are terrorist nests and training centres," Karzai told a press briefing.. He referred to new allegations that civilians were harmed in air strikes Monday in the southern province of Kandahar that locals said struck a wedding party.. Afghan authorities would not comment on locals' claims that scores of people were dead but the US military admitted people had been hurt in the action in the district of Shah Wali Kot.. "We acknowledge some civilians have been injured and some may have been killed," Colonel Greg Julian, spokesman for the US forces in Afghanistan, told AFP.. "I can't confirm numbers," he said, adding the military regretted every time civilians became "collateral damage" when troops tried to take out militants.. The bride was among seven women and three children admitted to a Kandahar hospital with injuries said to be from the strikes, an AFP reporter said.. A man from Wocha Bakhto village who accompanied the wounded to the city said dozens of people were killed. This could not be confirmed.. "Taliban attacked the troops. Then the troops bombed our village and killed scores of people. There are still people under rubble," Shah Mohammad said.. Wali Karzai, the head of the Kandahar provincial council and brother of the Afghan president, also told AFP civilians had died but said it was unclear how many.. In Kabul, the president said the issue of civilian casualties had caused tensions in his government's relationship with the previous administration in the United States, the leading supplier of troops to Afghanistan.. Karzai also reiterated that Obama's administration should change strategy in the "war on terror", in which international forces now numbering 70,000 have failed to crush the insurgency.. "The 'war on terror' cannot be fought in Afghan villages... Afghanistan is the victim of terrorism," Karzai said.. The "'war on terror' should be directed to its nests and its training centres," he said, referring to militant hideouts in neighbouring Pakistan said to send fighters into Afghanistan.. Insurgents attacks are at the highest this year with the Taliban said to be joined by Islamic militants from other countries.. In a new incident, a bomb killed five policemen guarding archaeological sites in the southern province of Logar adjoining Kabul, police said, blaming the Taliban.. Seven militants were killed in a battle that erupted after they attacked a logistics convoy in Wardak, another province bordering the capital.. And the British military announced that a Gurkha soldier was killed Tuesday when a patrol came under attack in the volatile southern province of Helmand. — AFP
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