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.
Is that all Karzai can ever do is "protest the killings"? What good does that do?