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Joint Inquiry Launched Into Civilian Casualties

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Los Angeles Times

Published: August 31, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan - After a week of tense public disagreement over the civilian casualty toll in a U.S.-led raid in western Afghanistan, officials from the United Nations, the Afghan government and the NATO-led force in the country said Saturday that all sides had agreed to a joint investigation.

As many as 90 civilians, about two-thirds of them children, were killed in the Aug. 22 raid in Herat province, the United Nations has asserted, with the Afghan government coming up with a count only slightly lower. But U.S. military officials have disputed those numbers, saying they think about 30 people were killed in the early morning strike on the village of Azizabad, and only five of them were civilians.

In the wake of the raid, President Hamid Karzai made his most strongly worded appeal yet for greater caution by Western troops during combat operations in populated areas. The Afghan leader said the deaths and their circumstances warranted a broad re-examination of operations by coalition troops, who are trying to contain an increasingly powerful Taliban-led insurgency.

If the U.N. estimates are found to be correct, the toll would represent what is thought to be the greatest number of civilian fatalities caused by Western troops in a single incident since the Afghan conflict began nearly seven years ago.

Continuing tension among the parties was evident in the fact that plans for a joint probe were announced by the U.N. and NATO's International Security Assistance Force - not the U.S.-led coalition, whose forces took part in the raid.

U.S. military spokesmen in Afghanistan have said the incident was under investigation by U.S. forces. Although results of that probe have not been publicized, senior Pentagon officials were quoted last week as saying the U.S. conclusions suggested the death toll was about one-third of that reported by the U.N. and Afghan authorities, and that nearly all those killed were militants.

U.S. authorities stoutly have maintained that Taliban fighters were operating in the area, and that the raiders' main target, a commander named Mullah Siddiq, was among the militants killed.

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