Women and children were among the civilians killed on Sunday when they were attacked after being mistaken for Taliban militants who are waging an eight-year insurgency to evict Western troops, the interior ministry said.[break]
US General Stanley McChrystal apologised for the incident in Uruzgan province to President Hamid Karzai, who has repeatedly warned foreign and Afghan forces to take all measures possible to avoid harming civilians.
The strike, which also injured 14 people, came days after NATO forces pressing a major offensive in the south killed at least nine Afghan civilians when a rocket slammed into a house -- for which McChrystal also apologised.
As NATO announced a joint investigation with Afghan authorities, Uruzgan provincial governor Sultan Ali Uruzgani put the number of dead from the air strike at 27.
"Twenty-seven civilians were killed and another 10 were wounded," he told AFP, adding: "There are four women among the dead and we are still trying to verify the number of children."
Sunday´s incident was the third mistaken NATO air strike in Afghanistan reported by Afghan officials in a week.
Last Thursday, a NATO bombing raid in the northern province of Kunduz killed seven Afghan policemen, according to hospital and government officials.
On February 15, NATO acknowledged that five civilians were killed accidentally and two others wounded in an air strike in southern Afghanistan.
Karzai used Saturday´s opening session of parliament to repeat his call for civilians to be protected as 15,000 Afghan, US and NATO troops press Operation Mushtarak (Together) in the southern province of Helmand into a second week. Related article: Food, medicine lacking in assault zone.
The assault on the Marjah and Nad Ali areas in the heartland of southern Afghanistan´s poppy growing region is the first step of a wider campaign that will last 12-18 months, McChrystal and his boss US General David Petraeus say.
The operation is a showcase test of their counter-insurgency strategy which marries military and civilian efforts to drive out militants and reassert government control with security and civil services.
The operation is now in its ninth day, and though police have moved into the target area, NATO commanders say it could be another month before it is cleared of fighters and their booby trap bombs.
NATO on Monday described resistance from Taliban fighters as "determined" in Marjah while "cautious optimism" was the order of the day in nearby Nad Ali, "as early signs indicate a return to normality".
McChrystal was quoted as saying that Kandahar province, neighbouring Helmand and the spiritual home of the Taliban, is the likely next target of operations to eradicate the insurgent militia.
Mushtarak was a "model for the future," he was quoted by Britain´s The Times newspaper as telling reporters in Kabul.
NATO and Afghan officials have said the offensive is a template for expanding the campaign to at least three other Taliban-held areas of Helmand.
McChrystal´s comments were the first to acknowledge a wider theatre for NATO operations.
"We are going to go to where significant parts of the population are at risk and Kandahar is clearly very, very important not just to the south but to the nation," he said, adding: "It is not the only area though."
"In many ways it is a model for the future: an Afghan-led operation supported by the coalition, deeply engaged with the people," McChrystal was quoted as saying.
Petraeus told US television on Sunday described that Mushtarak is the initial stage of a plan that McChrystal has mapped out for the coming 12-18 months -- coinciding with Obama´s timetable for withdrawal of US troops.
"This is just the initial operation of what will be a 12-18 month campaign as General McChrystal and his team mapped it out," Petraeus said, describing the Taliban resistance as formidable but disjointed.
"We spent the last year getting the inputs right in Afghanistan, getting the structure and organisations necessary for a comprehensive civil military campaign, putting the best leaders we can find in charge of those."
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