Berlin defends colonel after NATO report on Afghan airstrike (Roundup)

Oct 29, 2009, 12:32 GMT

   Berlin - A NATO military inquiry into a controversial airstrike last month in Afghanistan places no blame on the German army, the head of the German armed forces said Thursday in Berlin.

It also was unable to resolve wildly varying estimates of the death toll in the September 4 bombing of a Taliban unit, said General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the chief of staff. NATO has not published the result of the inquiry, but has sent it to Berlin first.

Colonel Georg Klein summoned US air support to destroy two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban just a few kilometres from a German base. Villagers say the bombs also killed civilians who were stealing petrol from the trucks, which were stranded at night in a river bed.

'I see no grounds to doubt that they acted appropriately,' said Schneiderhan of the German officers involved.

According to Schneiderhan, the toll can no longer be known precisely. Depending on who is quoted, the strikes killed between 17 and 142 people, and there could have been between 30 or 40 civilians either killed or wounded in the bombing.

'That does not mean that non-participating persons were killed by the airstrike,' said Scheiderhan.

The report was compiled by officers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, a NATO operation, and flown to Germany on Wednesday as urgent mail.

   Schneiderhan said the incident, which set off recriminations in Germany, where the Afghan deployment is not popular, should not be seen in isolation. There had been numerous Taliban attacks on ISAF troops in Klein's zone of responsibility in northern Afghanistan.

Up to the end of August, six stolen tankers and other trucks had been used by the Taliban in attacks with high casualty tolls. The German forces had had intelligence that similar attacks were planned on the German civilian reconstruction team, he added.

A report to Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated in mid-September that 30 civilians and 69 Taliban fighters were killed in the strike.