Afghan civilian death reports 'extremely overexaggerated': U.S. military
Insurgent attacks kill 4 British soldiers, 21 civilians in Helmand province
Last Updated: Friday, May 8, 2009 | 12:19 PM ET
The Associated Press
The U.S. military said Friday reports that as many as 147 civilians died in fighting involving American forces and the Taliban were "extremely overexaggerated" and investigators were still analyzing the data collected at the site.
Afghan villagers mark new burial site of victims who were allegedly killed during coalition air strikes in Bala Baluk district of Farah province in western Afghanistan on Tuesday. (Associated Press) In the south, meanwhile, four NATO soldiers and 21 civilians died in a string of insurgent attacks, including a suicide bombing in a busy market, the military alliance said Friday.
The soldiers were later confirmed as British by the U.K. Defence Ministry. NATO's International Security Assistance Force does not release the names or nationalities of its casualties, allowing its member nations to disclose the information.
Officials said preliminary findings of the joint U.S.-Afghan investigation into the deaths in the villages of Ganjabad and Gerani in the western Farah province could be released as early as Friday, but they have yet to schedule an announcement.
Reports of the large number of civilian deaths come at an awkward time for the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, as the U.S. steps up its military campaign here while emphasizing the importance of nonmilitary efforts to stabilize the country.
While the reports of civilian deaths at the hands of international force in the past were met by an immediate outcry from President Hamid Karzai's administration, this time the response was muted.
The most ferocious reaction came from lawmakers in the Afghan parliament, who demanded of foreign troops' operations be regulated by a special agreement with the Afghan government. The lawmakers did not specify what that would entail.
A local official said that he collected from residents the names of 147 people killed during fighting on Monday night and Tuesday. If true, it would be the deadliest case of civilian casualties in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban regime.
But the U.S. military described that toll from the fighting as over the top.
"The investigators and the folks on the ground think that those numbers are extremely overexaggerated," U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said. "We are definitely nowhere near those estimates."
Mathias said she could not yet provide estimates of how many people were killed because the team has yet to produce its findings.
Victims buried in mass graves: villagers
Afghan residents say the destruction was from aerial bombing. U.S. officials have suggested that at least some of the deaths were caused by insurgents, whom the military accuses of using civilians as human shields when fighting with its forces.
In a video obtained Friday by Associated Press Television News, villagers are seen wrapping the mangled bodies of some of the victims in blankets and cloths and lining them up on the dusty ground.
In one shot, two children are lifted from a blanket with another adult already in it. The children's faces are blackened, and parts of their tunics are soaked in what appears to be coagulated blood.
Villagers said they gathered children, women and elderly men in several compounds near the village of Gerani to keep them away from the fighting, but that the compounds were hit by air strikes.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has also said that women and children were among dozens of dead.
