NATO airstrike ‘kills two Afghan children’
Worldwide, Daily news | ankakh | March 30, 2013 21:33A NATO helicopter strike killed two children in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said, in the latest civilian casualties to beset the coalition’s war against Taliban militants.
The operation close to Ghazni city was conducted after local people complained of a Taliban post targeting traffic convoys in the area, Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, the deputy governor of Ghazni province, said.
“It was a joint (Afghan and coalition) operation conducted this morning that killed nine Taliban. Unfortunately, two school children were also killed and seven other civilians were wounded,” he said.
It was unclear who called in the airstrike, but President Hamid Karzai recently banned Afghan forces from requesting foreign air support.
Civilian casualties mostly caused by air strikes have been one of the most sensitive issues in relations between Karzai and the NATO-led military.
The overall civilian death toll in 2012 also declined some 12 percent to 2,754, compared with 3,131 the previous year, according to the annual report by the United Nations Mission to Afghanistan.
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