NATO Raid Kills Six Civilians in Afghanistan

Karzai Demands Investigation into Attack on House in Khost Province

The number of civilians NATO is killing in Afghanistan continues to soar this week, as protesters took to the streets of the Khost Province to condemn an overnight attack on a house which killed at least six civilians and wounded two others.

NATO, as it so often does, reported all six of the slain as armed “fighters from the Haqqani network.” The provincial governor’s office, however, reported the slain to include a school teacher, a teenaged student and an 11-year-old girl.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the killings and ordered the provincial government to conduct a thorough investigation of the NATO raid. Karzai has repeatedly demanded that NATO forces stop killing civilians.

The incident comes just a day after two other NATO attacks in Afghanistan killed 16 (Logar Province) and 4 (Kunar Province) civilians respectively.  Last week NATO twice killed civilians in the Khost Province, including an air strike which killed a large number of children.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.