Afghanistan: NATO Airstrike Killed 14 Civilians
The scene of a US-led strike in Afghanistan. [PressTV]
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan officials said Sunday that a NATO airstrike targeting Taliban fighters killed 14 civilians, all of them women and children, in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday night.
Witnesses said an unknown number of bombs fell around 11 p.m., landing on two family compounds in the Salam Bazaar area of Nawzad district, a small farming community about 50 miles north of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. Five girls, seven boys and two women were killed as they slept, the provincial governor’s office said in a statement. Another six people were wounded. Grieving friends and relatives drove through the night transporting eight bodies to the provincial hospital in Lashkar Gah, a resident of the village, Haji Janan, said. The other bodies remained buried under the rubble as villagers tried to dig them out, he said. The governor’s office released photographs of men carrying the dusty, bruised bodies of dead children swaddled in sheets into the hospital.
“The office of the provincial governor strongly condemns this deep sorrow incident,” the office said in an English version of its statement. The statement also requested NATO to stop “air strikes that result in civilian casualties.”
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