NATO Kills at Least Seven Police in Afghan Air Strike
Afghan Interior Minister Labels Deaths 'Friendly Fire'
A NATO air strike in the northern Kunduz Province of Afghanistan has left at least seven Afghan police killed and two others wounded. The attacks came during a “joint operation.”
Reportedly a joint patrol of Afghan soldiers and NATO forces came under fire in the Imam Sahib district, but when they called in the air strike they hit the police “by mistake.”
Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry labeled the killings “friendly fire.” It was the latest in a growing number of strikes across Afghanistan which have missed their intended target and killed police or civilians.
Officials say NATO intends to launch a major offensive in northern Afghanistan at some point in the near future. Kunduz, along the Tajik border, was the site of a massive air strike last fall which killed an enormous number of civilians.
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damocles
February 19th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
If the US airstrikes cannot identify their own troops, what chance do civilians have?
MoT
February 19th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Maybe this explains the Afghan "defections" to the Taliban.
Henry_Clemens
February 19th, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Gee, with all of these recent "friendly fire" killings , I get this strange feeling that NATO is running out of enemies to attack and feels compelled to attack someone, somewhere. Maybe there aren't as many Taliban and Al-qaeda as we're led to believe?