THE TWO fuel tankers would have looked out of place, stuck by a river bank near an Afghan village. Local people came out to have a look and help carry inside makeshift containers of siphoned fuel from the vehicles.
That was when the Nato missiles struck, wiping out much of the village of Omar Kheil, and doing critical damage to US and Nato hopes of making a fresh start in Afghanistan.
Taliban militants had hijacked the tankers on the main road out of Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, and driven them to Omar Kheil, which is under their control, about 20km from the city. The hijacking, on Thursday night, was reported to German Nato soldiers garrisoned nearby, who spotted the lorries yesterday morning. At some point the German commander called in an air strike to deal with the problem.
Estimates differ as to how many people were killed in the fireball, but they range from a few score to more than a hundred.
Moeen Marastial, a member of parliament from Kunduz, said yesterday: “Local people are telling me 130 people have been killed despite all the promises of Nato to do fewer bombardments and reduce civilian casualties. There will be a reaction to this. It is a very bad day for international forces in Afghanistan.”
Muhammad Omar, the governor of Kunduz province, told the BBC that 90 people were dead, but that this number included senior Taliban militants.
President Hamid Karzai, who is in the midst of an election controversy, said targeting civilians in any form was unacceptable, and emphasised that innocent civilians must not be killed or wounded during military operations.
Nato’s International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) initially discounted reports that civilians were among the dead. “After assessing that only insurgents were in the area, the local Isaf commander ordered an air strike, which destroyed the fuel trucks, and a large number of insurgents were reportedly killed and injured,” the first Isaf statement said. That line was amended when badly burned survivors started turning up at the local hospital.
Brig Gen Eric Tremblay told Reuters: “It would appear that many civilian casualties are being evacuated and treated in the local hospitals. There is perhaps a direct link with the incident that has occurred around the two fuel trucks.”
An investigation has been launched which will focus on the German decision to call in the strike. It happened in the same week the local US commander, Gen Stanley McChrystal, delivered a strategic assessment on the state of the war to Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen and to Washington. It is known that one of its main thrusts was a change of emphasis from killing the Taliban to protecting civilians. Nato officers have been told that if they have Taliban fighters in their sights but there is a risk of civilian casualties, they are to hold fire.
Gen McChrystal believes Nato has alienated the Afghan people by excessive reliance on air strikes that have caused high civilian casualties. But Isaf functions as a patchwork of different national troop contingents, working in different circumstances and under different rules of engagement.
German troops function under restrictions imposed by Berlin, which are aimed at limiting their own casualties and have resulted in them being more cautious. If the investigation suggests an air strike was called in because the German force was reluctant to commit troops to recover the tankers, it will escalate a row over the German restrictions that is endangering Nato unity.
Kunduz province had been considered tranquil, but Yesterday’s events showed there are Taliban-controlled zones near the main city. – (Guardian service)