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Nato attack kills five Afghan troops Nato attack kills five Afghan troops
(35 minutes later)
An early morning Nato air strike has killed five Afghan army soldiers in the central province of Logar, the international alliance and the area’s government have confirmed. A Nato air strike has killed at least five
Another 17 soldiers were injured in the attack, which took place at 2am on Thursday, a provincial official said. Government officials were in meetings to decide their response and conduct a further investigation, he said. Afghan soldiers and injured eight others in one of the worst friendly
Nato issued a statement confirming the deaths. fire incidents of the war and a fresh blow to strained ties between
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has been deeply critical of killings by international forces in his country and it has been a major and longstanding source of tension. Kabul and Washington.
The Associated Press contributed to this report The men died during an operation in
eastern Logar province in the early hours of Thursday morning, Nato
said. A spokesman for the provincial governor said the bomb hit
an army checkpoint, even though such outposts are usually marked on
foreign military maps of Afghanistan.
“We can confirm that at least five
Afghan national army personnel were accidentally killed this morning
during an operation in eastern Afghanistan,” the International
Security Assistance Force said in a statement.
“An investigation is being conducted
at this time to determine the circumstances that led to this
unfortunate incident ... We value the strong relationship with our
Afghan partners and we will determine what actions will be taken to
ensure incidents like this do not happen again.”
The deaths are likely to stir tensions
in Afghanistan, where there has been widespread anger at civilian
deaths from bombs dropped by drones and combat planes. President
Hamid Karzai has been one of the fiercest critics of aerial
bombardments and has banned them near homes and villages. He did
not immediately comment on Thursday’s deaths.
Government troops are increasingly
exposed as western combat forces head home. The Logar bombing came a couple of weeks after a Taliban attack killed 21 soldiers in
another part of eastern Afghanistan.
This is the first time an air strike has
killed so many Afghan soldiers but friendly fire attacks have been a
problem throughout the war. In one of the worst incidents in 2007 a
US helicopter gunship mowed down 11 Afghan police.
Nor have foreign soldiers been immune.
In 2002 a US friendly fire attack killed four Canadian soldiers and
injured eight others; more recent cases included the 2009 shooting of a
British soldier by a US helicopter. Perhaps most famously the football star Pat Tilman was killed by
friendly fire in an incident the US military initially tried to
cover up.
Mokhtar Amiri contributed to this report