NATO airstrike kills 9 Afghan children, says provincial official

Mar 1, 2011, 18:44 GMT

Kabul - Nine Afghan children died in the south-eastern province of Kunar on Tuesday in a NATO airstrike after a military base came under attacks by suspected Taliban forces, an official said.

Two rockets fired by suspected militants landed inside a US military forward operating base in the Darah-Ye Pech district of that province, Khalilullah Ziayee, the provincial police chief said.

'Moment later a NATO aircraft killed nine children, who were collecting firewood on a nearby mountain,' he said. One more child was injured in the attack.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement that the military was looking into 'allegations of civilian casualties.'

One local contractor was slightly wounded in the rocket attacks, it said, adding: 'Coalition forces returned fire at the point of origin with indirect and aerial fire.'

'We take civilian casualty allegations very seriously,' Colonel Charles Toplikar, an ISAF official said in the statement. 'We are here to protect the people of Afghanistan.

Civilian casualties at the hands of NATO forces are the most sensitive issue in Afghanistan. Afghan's leader has repeatedly warned that such killings sap public support for the central government and the presence of international troops in the country.

A government-led investigation concluded that 65 civilians were killed in NATO airstrikes in the Ghaziabad district, also of Kunar province, last month.

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