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Nato air strike 'kills nine civilians'
Staff and agencies
Monday March 5, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Afghan men shout anti-American slogans after a car bomber attacked a US convoy in Nangarhar province, eastern Afghanistan yesterday. The US response left up to 10 civilians dead. Photograph: Rahmat Gul/AP

Two incidents involving US forces have left around 19 Afghan civilians dead since yesterday, prompting furious protests against the US and Nato.
In the first incident, up to 10 civilians were killed as a convoy of US marines fled after being attacked by a suicide bomber in a minivan in eastern Nangarhar province yesterday.

Nine Afghan witnesses said US marines had fired indiscriminately on civilian cars and pedestrians as they sped away, the Associated Press reported.

The US military said it was unclear what had happened and militant gunmen may have been to blame for the deaths.

Then today Afghan officials said nine civilians had been killed after a Nato air strike hit a house during a firefight between US forces and militants, killing nine Afghans who lived there.

The air strike came after militants had fired on a Nato base in Kapisa province, just north of Kabul.

Later a house was hit, killing five women, three boys and a man, said Sayad Mohammad Dawood Hashimmi, Kapisa's deputy governor.

A high-level Afghan delegation will today begin an investigation the incident in Nangarhar, which also left more than 30 people wounded. One US marine was injured in the initial suicide attack.

Witnesses included five Afghans who are being treated in hospital for bullet wounds.

Tur Gul, 38, who was standing on the roadside by a petrol station and was shot twice in his right hand, said that US marines "opened fire on everybody, the ones inside the vehicles and the ones on foot.

"They were firing everywhere, and they even opened fire on 14 to 15 vehicles passing on the highway."

Mohammad Khan Katawazi, the district chief of Shinwar in Nangarhar province, said the marines treated every car and person along the busy, tree-lined road as a potential attacker.

Ahmed Najib, a 23-year-old hit by a bullet in his right shoulder, said of the US forces: "I saw them turning and firing in this direction, then turning and firing in that direction. I even saw a farmer shot by the Americans."

Lieutenant Colonel David Accetta, the top US military spokesman in Afghanistan, said it was not clear if the civilians had been "killed or wounded by coalition forces' gunfire or enemy attackers' gunfire".

He said gunmen may have attacked the marines at different points as they escaped.

A spokesman at Afghanistan's interior ministry said: " I think more of the gunfire was from the [US] side."

Reports that US and coalition forces have killed or wounded so many Afghans have prompted fury.

In Nangarhar, there were protests in the area where the civilians were killed, which is some 30 miles from the border with Pakistan.

Hundreds of Afghans blocked one stretch of road in the province and threw rocks at police, with some demonstrators shouting: "Death to America! Death to Karzai."

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has pleaded repeatedly for western troops to take care not to harm civilians, and in December wept during a speech lamenting civilian deaths at the hands of foreign forces.

The US-based Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 100 Afghan civilians died as a result of Nato and coalition assaults in 2006.

A count by the Associated Press, based on reports from Afghan, Nato and coalition officials, puts the overall civilian death toll in 2006 at 834, most, ( 700+) from militant attacks.

I agree Piles, Gomer, V. Sadly, these Taliban, Al queda moonbattery types seem not to get it at all!

Always willing to kill civilians and or hide behind them, in a cowardly fight, just to get the PC obernanny's off in false reality. Seen yet willingly unseen, in tactical hope that these moonbat's of obernanny's will leave unnoticed their side of why Muslim civilians are dying, at their hands, or, as result of their hide behind them strategy, in quantum more times, merely to create the illusion of tactically effectiveness within the news and the mindlessness of their western sympaticos.

While in reality, they strategically, keep losing everytime, everywhere, all the time, on the battlefield, in deadly destructions of their own and their supportors.

Sadly not effecting, YET, those in the west, who choose to ignore and or choose to support their killings as if it did not exist and was not a strategy used to kill civilians they hide behind when they fight....

( Circa; The General Giap theory of war, cannot win, let the press and the moonbats do it for you.)




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TRADER you really are a sad prat.They lost it and opened fire on anything that moved on the road.
They had no targets, but worse of all and it always comes down to this.Absolutely no discipline when under fire.History shows that when US Forces are under attack by unknowns,they will fire on anything regardless of who they might be and this is why the British Army is and always will be superior.They don't call air strikes unless as last resort and British troops are trained in accuraccy whereas American troops just rock and roll and hope for the best.But the worst thing that could have happened is to put a US General in charge of NATO FORCES in Afghanistan and your not going to like this trader but the US has never been a colonial
power so you have no understanding of the locale where you may have to operate.The UK does, it has 2/300 years of history in any area of operations you may want to dig up.Oh and by the way just to rub it in.The SAS are still the best in the world at what they do, and this is coming from a German.

TRADER you really are a sad prat.They lost it and opened fire on anything that moved on the road.

Oddly, like you would NOT fight for your life if you stood in their boots at that moment while being attacked.

Then again that’s absurd is it not? For your type me-ist compassion would not fight for anything, especially for another would you?

You are so ill informed it is silly. The facts are that NATO (Non-US) troops, have been similarly ambushed and as such, have been equally victimized by this same deliberate strategy of Islamic radicals, whom purposely attempt to get allies, or kill themselves, civilians, while hiding amongst them when they attack allied military units.

What planet have you been living on? How uninformed you are in this assumption that, in fact, not, every major force of allied military in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the British, have been accused and have not unwillingly but out of survival killed “alleged” civilians when confronted with this now mundane and so often used tactic of using civilian and or “other unarmed militants” as human shields a well documented Islamic Militants tactic of media attention victory strategy.

Your ONE SIDED FLAT WORLD, where only darkness is seen in but one color of black is so yesterday and so flawed, it is now comical.

Though you are capable of seeing the bright lights in this frequency of Radical Islam’s media attention victory strategy using human shields, you and others, willfully ignore it exists. Yet are able to read about it every day.

]U]By this willful blindness, it is clear your stroller bias Petty coats are showing sweetie.[/U]

You willingly convict one side in this DRONGE and PRAT fo yours, while wholly and intentionally ignoring, leaving unnoted [B]the ambushers, who may have and are as likely to have killed most of the civilians as the NATO forces who are victimized by this strategy of human shield. [/B]

You have NO idea how many civilians the Islamic extremist's killed themselves or if that they were not deliberately shooting civilians as part of the attack that was planned to hide among civilians to begin with, knowing tactually the allied had no choice but to fire when ambushed or die.

You just assume the issue is as narrowly one sided as you are you so narrow- minded presume in ignorance of what it would be like to be there when THEY not us put civilians or their own supporters in harms wat as part of a strategy.

Your type's compassionless bias, is self evident. It ignores daily news evidence that this is a purposeful pervasive strategy whereby Islamic radicals kill people every day, by qauntum leaps, in comparison to the allies in what is their (cannot win militarily media tactical Motus Operendi). They use it and it is reported or has been reported, daily in Iraq, in Lebanon and Afghanistan or elsewhere, while radical attack locales, NATO and allied military units from multiple directions or from an area populated by civilians, who may be as likely militants and their supportersas not. But, which, when they are reported, they are allassumed to be innocents and or not remotely being used by the militants in a planned media attention strategy of using "alleged civilian deaths to drum beat anti-war victory.

What is so comical is moonbat’s like you and others think these guys are not smart enough to fool you and use you in this strategy. Or more funny is this group-think, of relativism, that does not consider if they are successful they will be knocking soon on your doors. Whereby you will be begging for idiots like me and those in these places to come a running to pull arses out of the fire once again.

As to second incident of the house, it is now being reported by other Afghans in that area that a missile was fired on a NATO base from next to the house. Thus, again using it, to get people killed in the usual we cannot win militarily strategy of media and moonbattery hysteric excitations.

They had no targets, but worse of all and it always comes down to this.Absolutely no discipline when under fire.History shows that when US Forces are under attack by unknowns,they will fire on anything regardless of who they might be and this is why the British Army is and always will be superior.

Absurdly untrue and misinformed. Many military units of many nations have killed civilians or perhaps militants reported as civilians when attacked in all areas of operations. I would never say the British Army is not a very fine and proven capable military force, as I would not say of the Canadians or Australians as well. Though each are extremely small forces with limited projective ability, they are prone to be effective and have worked well with their brothers in NATO arms, the Americans.

They don't call air strikes unless as last resort and British troops are trained in accuraccy whereas American troops just rock and roll and hope for the best.

One cannot argue with ignorance, for that is self-evident. Perhaps a history of the UK’s and others in Europe especially GERMAN military exploits and their own examples of killing civilians in war as well as thei own, in combat, would be a better source to prove your lack of informed knowledge or education in such matters.

But the worst thing that could have happened is to put a US General in charge of NATO FORCES in Afghanistan and your not going to like this trader but the US has never been a colonial
power so you have no understanding of the locale where you may have to operate. The UK does, it has 2/300 years of history in any area of operations you may want to dig up.Oh and by the way just to rub it in

Would you propose that the UK and European Imperialism and their centuries of tyranny and oppression of the "locale" to be your “best argument” for this Euro-think of we know how to deal with foreign locales far better because we were colonial empires who went out and conqured and oprssed millions for hundreds of years. I've seen your Euro-superiority and knowledge of locales at work in Thailand, elsewhere and within your own European numerous ethic and religious isolated and unassimilated ghettos, it very unimpressive to say the least.

Please your inability to deal with other cultures within your own culture is self evident of your fallacious ignorance of this reality seen in the many disenfranchised and unassimilated Ethic and Religious ghettos one can find from north to south in the UK and in France, Holland and especially Germany.

Is that your best argument of Euro-know in to how to deal with locales? History, child, history, do you think the Euro-Empires willingly gave up their colonies, not out of rebellion and Empire weakness, instead? Or that their colonies gave up the Empires, not because the Empires understood them, but exactly the opposite, in oppressing them, holding them mostly by military might, not of free will and choice. Now that is sad ignorance of reality indeed.

The SAS are still the best in the world at what they do, and this is coming from a German.

Well, that is an endorsement of great credit, German Militarism, your kidding of course. I think I covered the UK military and my respect for it.

this is why the British Army is and always will be superior.They don't call air strikes unless as last resort and British troops are trained in accuraccy whereas American troops just rock and roll and hope for the best.But the worst thing that could have happened is to put a US General in charge of NATO FORCES in Afghanistan and your not going to like this trader but the US has never been a colonial
power so you have no understanding of the locale where you may have to operate.The UK does, it has 2/300 years of history in any area of operations you may want to dig up.Oh and by the way just to rub it in.The SAS are still the best in the world at what they do, and this is coming from a German.

Last Updated: Monday, 5 March 2007, 12:20 GMT