AFGHANISTAN:A foreign airstrike killed nine Afghan policemen in western Afghanistan after a clash in which both sides mistook the other for Taliban militants, Afghan officials said yesterday.
The incident is certain to reinforce Afghan perceptions that international troops do not take enough care to avoid injuring innocent people and comes after a string of mistakes that Afghan officials say killed dozens of civilians.
Clashes broke out between Afghan police and international troops in the Anar Dara district of Farah province, with both sides thinking the other were Taliban militants, the deputy provincial governor, Mohammad Younus, Rasuli said.
"Apart from the nine police who were killed, three other of them have gone missing. We do not know if they are under the rubble or their bodies can not be found," Rasuli said.
"US soldiers have surrounded the site and we have sent a delegation about the incident," he added.
The foreign troops called in airstrikes on the police post which killed nine policemen and wounded four others, including the district police chief, he said.
Both Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and the separate US-led coalition force in Afghanistan said they were aware of an incident in Farah, but could not confirm any details of what had happened.
Meanwhile, Isaf troops accidentally killed four Afghan civilians in a mortar attack overnight in the Barmal district of the eastern province of Paktika, close to the Pakistani border, the force said.
"An Isaf unit fired two mortar rounds, which landed nearly 1km (0.6 miles) away from the intended target," Isaf said in a statement.
"Shortly afterwards wounded civilians presented themselves for treatment at an Isaf base, and a helicopter medical evacuation mission was immediately launched to assist."
Afghan officials say coalition airstrikes killed more than 60 Afghan civilians, many of them women and children, in the east of the country earlier this month. US forces have launched investigations.
- (Reuters)