KABUL – A foreign force air raid in central Afghanistan may have killed three Afghan police and wounded three, the NATO-led force said on Monday, the third such incident in more than a month.
Civilian casualties and the mistaken killing of members of the Afghan security forces have been a frequent source of friction between President Hamid Karzai’s government and Western military forces in a war now in its 10th year. In southern Kandahar’s Spin Boldak town – scene of the country’s deadliest insurgent attack in nearly six months late last week — a suicide bomber killed two policemen and a civilian, the Interior Ministry said.
Foreign troops on patrol in Daykundi province on Sunday called in an air strike after seeing nine people setting up what appeared to be an ambush, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said. It was later determined the raid may have targeted Afghan police, it said.
“While we take extraordinary precaution while conducting operations to avoid friendly casualties, it appears innocent people may have been mistakenly targeted,” senior ISAF spokesman Colonel Rafael Torres said in a statement.
The air strike in Daykundi, a remote province west of Kabul, is the third such incident in more than a month. On Dec. 8, the Afghan Defence Ministry condemned a foreign air raid in Logar province it said killed two of its soldiers and wounded five.
