Afghans say U.S.-led raid kills 17 civilians
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned on Thursday a U.S.-led coalition military operation that his office said killed 17 civilians, including women and children.
The U.S. military said only militants had been killed in the operation, which it said was aimed at the Taliban's roadside bomb network in the eastern Laghman province.
In a separate incident three civilians were killed and nine others injured by a suicide bomb attack that targeted a NATO-led convoy in the Maywand district of Kandahar province, in southern Afghanistan, the district police chief said.
Civilian deaths caused by foreign troop operations when hunting militants have undermined support for foreign forces and are a sore point between the Afghan government and its allies.
"Based on the reports, during a coalition operation, 17 civilians including women and children were killed among militants in Laghman province," Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement.
"The Afghan government has always clarified its stance in this regard and wants an end to such incidents, which only divert the war on terror from its main path and endanger our successes," the statement said.
Karzai also condemned the insurgents for deliberately using civilians as "human shields."
U.S. forces spokesman Colonel Jerry O'Hara, responding to the president's statement, told Reuters on Thursday that 32 insurgents, including a woman, were killed during the operation.
"I am confirming to you that all killed were militants," he said. "If any civilians were involved in this operation, our sincere condolences to them and their family," O'Hara said.
Karzai, who has been leading Afghanistan since U.S.-led troops overthrew Taliban's government in 2001, has repeatedly warned foreign forces to prevent civilian casualties.
Nearly 700 civilians were killed until October last year during operations by foreign and Afghan forces, an Afghan rights body said last month, quoting a U.N. estimate.
(Reporting By Hamid Shalizi, Editing by Jerry Norton)
