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Herat: Nato's top commander in Afghanistan on Saturday called for a joint investigation into a US-led airstrike that UN and Afghan officials say killed as many as 90 civilians recently. Meanwhile, an Afghan military official involved in the attack said misinformation led US forces to hit the wrong target.
General David McKiernan's appeal for a coordinated inquiry came four days after UN officials in Afghanistan said their investigators had found "convincing evidence" that at least 60 children and 30 adults were killed in the August 21 airstrike in the western province of Herat. US military officials maintain that five civilians were killed.
Nato officials have said that about 40 Taliban insurgents were killed in the attack on a compound in the town of Azizabad.
Meanwhile, an Afghan army commander told a government investigative commission yesterday that US and Afghan troops were fired on first from the Afghan village where the commission says scores of civilians were killed, a report released later yesterday Sunday said.
The chief of staff for the Herat corps of the Afghan army told the head of the government's investigative commission that shots were fired from the village of Azizabad at US and Afghan troops in the morning hours of August 22.
But the report, released by the office of President Hamid Karzai, did not specify who fired the shots.
Eyewitnesses
However, the report also said that, according to the people in Azizabad, security institutions and "the eyewitnesses of the delegation," all of the victims of the operation were civilian.
"Among the victims, there is not any foreign or internal Taliban," the report said.
The statement did not mention a joint investigation, and no Afghan government officials have confirmed that the government would participate.
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