Afghan governor says over 130 killed in NATO airstrike (1st Lead)

Sep 7, 2009, 10:36 GMT

   Kunduz, Afghanistan - A district governor in northern Afghanistan said Monday that more than 130 people were killed in a NATO airstrike last week that struck two Taliban-hijacked fuel trucks.

   A Taliban spokesman said the rebel group asked United Nations and other human rights groups to visit the area and to investigate the incident.

   Friday's airstrike conducted by US planes was ordered by a German military commander when a large crowd of people was observed through satellite images gathering around the two trucks stuck in a riverbed in the Chardarah district in Kunduz province.

   'According to interviews that we did with local people and tribal elders, 107 people were killed in Omerkhel and Gul Bagh villages of the province,' Abdul Wahid Omarkhel, the Chardarah district governor, told the German Press Agency dpa.

   He said 15 other people, who had come from neighbouring Baghlan province, were also killed in the blast. More than a dozen people were also killed from the Ali Abad district, according to information Omarkhel said he had received from that district.

   He could not say how many of the victims were civilians, but said a large number of children, aged 10 to 16, were among those killed.

   The district governor said authorities also had compiled a list of 27 people injured in the airstrike.

   Meanwhile, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the rebel group was ready to provide security for UN and human rights groups to visit the attack site.

   'We asked the United Nations team and other human rights groups to come and investigate the incident so that such mass killing be stopped,' Mujahid told dpa by phone from an undisclosed location.

   UN spokesman Dan McNorton said an investigating team had only interviewed some affected families by telephone.

   'As yet our team has not been able to reach the site itself. Efforts are ongoing to visit the location,' he said.

   Taliban are most active in the Chardarah district. A dpa reporter who visited the area on Saturday saw heavily armed Taliban militants patrolling the area and searching passing vehicles at their checkpoints.

   The district governor also said he submitted a list of casualties to an envoy of President Hamid Karzai who had come to the province for an investigation of the strike.

   A member of the central government's investigative team confirmed that they were verifying the lists received from Chardarah and Ali Abad districts.

   On Sunday during a meeting with local villagers, government investigators promised to assist all affected families, including the families of local Taliban militants, who were killed or injured in the incident.

   The airstrike came two months after the new NATO commander for Afghanistan, US general Stanley McChrystal ordered the allied forces in Afghanistan make protecting Afghan civilians the centerpiece of their war strategy.

   McChrystal visited the site one day after the incident and ordered an investigation by NATO military personnel.

   Afghan police and German military denied that civilians were killed in the incident.

   German German Chancellor Angela Merkel also called on Sunday for a speedy investigation to determine whether any civilians were killed in the air raid.