AFGHANISTAN: NATO bombing killed civilian in Kandahar.

The Afghan governor of Kandahar said that NATO bombing killed eight civilians in a district southwest of Kandahar province on Tuesday (October 17) but a resident of the area said the number of causalities was much higher. NATO denied that the claims from the governor, saying it had hit Taliban hideouts "Around 2 o'clock pm a plane bombed our houses here, you see that it is a resident area. 16 people killed ,women, children and men and another 21 people wounded, after the bomb the foreigners soldiers came here and shot dead two wounded residents here, we don't know why," said Wakeel Ahamd, a resident of the area hit. Ahamd also lost a number of family members in the attack. NATO took over control of the south from U.S. forces in July and last month launched a two-week offensive against the resurgent Taliban called Operation Medusa in which it said it killed hundreds of insurgents. On Wednesday (October 18), Afghan military forces claimed that they had killed 32 Taliban fighters in clashes and arrested some in a border town in a south-eastern Afghan province on Tuesday. The Taliban were killed when they attacked International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops in the border district of Bermel Tuesday evening. The Defence Ministry said NATO aircraft also took part in the battle that continued for more than four hours. In another air strike, U.S. warplanes killed a senior Taliban commander in an air strike in the violence-racked southern province of Uruzgan, NATO said. The strike comes as British forces with the NATO-led ISAF began pulling out of the Musa Qala district in neighbouring Helmand, scene of bloody battles with Taliban insurgents. Mountainous Uruzgan is a stronghold of the Taliban, ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001, and next to Kandahar province, the birthplace of the hardline Islamist group. The Taliban have regrouped since they were overthrown, and this has been the bloodiest year since 2001, with more than 3,000 people, including about 150 foreign soldiers, killed in fighting.

ITN Source | October 19, 2006

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