Investigation into civilian death claims reveals its findings

(PAN) AN INVESTIGATION into claims of civilian casualties has found that last week’s US air-strikes killed 64 civilians, most of them women and children.

The US-led coalition denied killing the civilians in eastern province of Nangarhar and Nuristan during separate raids on July 4 and 6, arguing that only militants were killed in the strikes near the border with Pakistan.

President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation into the claims of civilian deaths, which have attracted criticism from the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Parliament.

The team that looked into Sunday's strike in the remote Deh Bala district of Nangarhar said they were shown the bloodied clothes of women and children killed in the air-strike, which hit a wedding party and turned buildings into rubble.

"We found that 47 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in the air strikes and another nine were wounded," said the head of the mission, Burhanullah Shinwari.

"They were all civilians and had no links with Taliban or Al-Qaeda," said Shinwari, who is also the deputy speaker of Afghanistan's senate.

Around 10 people were missing and believed to be still under the rubble, he said.

Another member of the delegation, Mohammad Asif Shinwari, said there were only three men among the dead and the rest were women and children.

The investigation team will present its findings to Karzai on Saturday.

A separate investigation into Friday's strike in the north-eastern province of Nuristan found that 17 civilians were killed, said General Mohammad Amin, a defence ministry official who headed the team.

The coalition said it hit "several" militants who were fleeing after attacking a US base in the area.

"We found that in the bombing 17 people were killed and nine were wounded, Amin said. "They are all civilians."

The relatives of some of the victims were paid compensation, Amin said, warning the killings could prompt a public backlash against the government and international troops fighting a growing insurgency.

"If the government keeps quiet about these civilian casualties in Nuristan like in the past, it will be bad for the security of the province," he said.

"Any loss of civilian life is tragic," said Nielson-Green, a coalition spokeswoman said. "We never target non-combatants. We do go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties."

Civilians are regularly caught in the crossfire between Taliban militants and foreign and national security forces.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Wednesday that 250 people were killed or wounded in five days of military action and militant attacks starting July 4.

This included in the US-led air strikes and a suicide blast outside the Indian embassy in Kabul on Monday that killed more than 40 people, including two Indian envoys.

The United Nations said last month that nearly 700 civilians lost their lives in Afghanistan so far this year, an almost two-thirds increase on the same period last year.

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