This is the freedom the western troops are bringing to Afghanistan. This is the true face of their liberating mission. Note the fucking lies before the truth came out. How many times has the u.s. killed "insurgents", but the truth has never come out? Fuck the occupiers of any country anywhere.
Afghan officials say a NATO airstrike killed eight women and girls who were out gathering firewood before dawn Sunday in a remote region on the east of the country.
The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force initially said an airstrike targeted around 45 insurgents, but later expressed its sincerest condolences over “possible ISAF-caused civilian casualties” numbering five to eight.
NATO spokesman Jamie Graybeal stressed later that they took the charge of civilian deaths seriously and were investigating the allegations. He said, however, that initial reports showed only insurgents were killed in the airstrike.
Villagers from Laghman province’s Alingar district brought the bodies to the governor’s office in the provincial capital, said Sarhadi Zewak, a spokesman for the provincial government.
“They were shouting ‘Death to America!’ They were condemning the attack,” Mr. Zewak said.
Seven injured females were brought to area hospitals for treatment, some of them as young as 10 years old, said provincial health director Latif Qayumi.
Airstrikes have been a particularly sensitive issue between the Afghan people — who say civilians often end up killed along with or instead of insurgents — and NATO forces who maintain that they are a key tactic for going after insurgent leaders.
Also Sunday, four soldiers fighting with the NATO-led alliance were killed in another suspected “insider” attack in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, the coalition said, bringing the total number of deaths this weekend caused by Afghans turning on their allies to six.
Four NATO-led troops were found dead and two wounded when a nearby response team arrived at the scene from a nearby checkpoint, a spokesman for the coalition said.
A U.S. official said the four troops were American.
One of the six members of the Afghan National Police (ANP) operating the observation post with six coalition troops was also found dead, while the other five had disappeared.
“The fighting had stopped by the time the responders arrived,” said Major Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the NATO-led coalition.
Sunday’s shooting took place in Zabol, a province where U.S. forces are based, according to a local official, who said the four soldiers killed were American.
The attack came a day after two British soldiers were shot dead by an Afghan policeman while returning from a patrol in southern Helmand province, one of the strongholds of the Taliban-led insurgency.
At least 51 foreign military personnel have been killed in “insider” attacks this year, deaths which have put a heavy strain on trust between the coalition and Afghanistan as they move towards handing security responsibility to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.
The rise in such attacks has led to the training of new recruits to the Afghan army and police being suspended.
With foreign combat troops withdrawing from the increasingly unpopular and expensive war, the enormous cultural divide still separating Afghans and their allies after 11 years of conflict has become more of a concern than ever.
Adding to the toll of coalition deaths caused by insider attacks over the weekend, two were killed and nine wounded in Friday’s attack on Camp Bastion, one of the worst attacks on a NATO-operated base all year. Prince Harry was at Camp Bastion at the time of Friday’s attack, but was unharmed.
In a separate incident on Sunday, NATO-led forces arrested a Taliban fighter responsible for killing two U.S. troops when they were downed in their Kiowa helicopter in eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said in another statement.
Relations between the NATO-led coalition and its Afghan partners have also been strained by civilian casualties.
Despite efforts to limit such deaths, over 200 civilians have been killed by foreign troops this year so far, according to figures provided by the coalition, around 50 percent fewer than a year ago.
With reports from Reuters and Agence France-Presse
