KABU
About 25 people may have been killed in a Nato airstrike in southern Afghanistan on Monday, an Afghan official said. Nato officials confirmed there had been an airstrike in Helmand province but said initial reports indicated that there were no civilian casualties.
The coalition was continuing to look into the operation, the officials said. The head of Helmand’s provincial council, Fazal Bari, said local officials had told him that 25 people had been killed but that the casualty figures could rise because many bodies were still buried in the rubble. He said the dead were inside a mosque in Baghran district but NATO said it had no reports of a mosque being struck.
Baghran is the northernmost district in Helmand, about 100 miles north of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. In an unrelated incident, an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan killed a NATO service member, the coalition said in a statement on Monday, bringing to 50 the number of coalition soldiers killed this month. The statement did not provide further details on Sunday’s death.
The Afghan insurgency has traditionally been fiercest in the country’s south and east. Most of the insurgency’s top commanders are believed to be hiding in the mountainous Pakistan border area. NATO and Afghan troops have been trying to wrest back control of the southern provinces from the Taliban since July, but attacks and roadside bombs are still daily occurrences.
NATO has also been trying to kill or capture Taliban leaders in airstrikes and in joint ground operations with the Afghan army. Residents said the push has resulted in patches of security in the south, but the insurgency has stepped up attacks in other parts of the country, including the north, which has traditionally been more stable.
Nato kills 25 in Afghanistan airstrike
