NATO checks reports of Afghan deaths in air strike

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - NATO forces are checking reports that 13 people including six children may have died in an overnight NATO air strike in southern Afghanistan, the British-led taskforce there said on Thursday.

Civilian deaths, especially from air strikes and operations by foreign forces, have infuriated Afghans and increased hostility toward the presence of the troops, nearly eight years after the ouster of the Taliban.

Overnight, NATO troops dropped a precision guided bomb on a house in Helmand province after "an extensive engagement with insurgents" fighting from inside, the NATO-led force said.

A spokesman for the British-led taskforce operating in the area said NATO troops had been told by local residents that six children, three women and four Taliban fighters had died.

The spokesman said Western forces had not yet been able to confirm those figures independently, adding they had treated three civilians wounded from the strike.

Earlier, the NATO-led force said in a statement it was checking to determine whether the wounds of those injured were sustained in the air strike, adding it was holding a "shura", or council meeting, with village elders.

Provincial police chief Assadullah Sherzad told Reuters civilians were killed in the strike on the outskirts of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, but he did not know how many.

A U.N. report last week said 1,500 civilians had died in the first eight months of this year, 68 percent killed by insurgents and 23 percent by government or Western forces, with the rest undetermined.

The new commander of U.S. and NATO troops issued orders in July placing tighter controls on the use of air strikes in an effort to reduce civilian deaths. Those orders from General Stanley McChrystal also call for more rapid efforts to apologize and provide compensation if civilians are killed.

NATO press officer Captain Elizabeth Mathias said she did not know the total number who may have been killed or wounded on Wednesday, but that it was probably fewer than 10.

"If indeed it is something that we did do, then we want to take ownership of that," she said. "But first we want to get our facts straight."

(Reporting by Abdul Malik in LASHKAR GAH and Peter Graff in KABUL, Editing by Dean Yates)