Nato forces kill four civilians at checkpoint 26/07/2008 - 10:00:24
Nato forces killed four civilians and wounded three others today when they fired at a vehicle that did not stop at a checkpoint in Afghanistan's volatile south, the alliance said.
Civilian casualties are a sore point between Afghanistan's government and international forces operating here.
President Hamid Karzai has implored Nato and US-led coalition troops to avoid killing civilians because it undermines support for his already weak central government.
The latest incident occurred in the Sangin district of Helmand province in the south, the hub of the resurgent Taliban militant movement.
A Nato statement said the vehicle was directed to stop but drove on. Nato forces fired warning shots away from the vehicle but were "forced to fire at it when it refused to stop, fearing an insurgent attack", it said.
Nato medical personnel tended to the wounded civilians, including taking them by helicopter to a hospital, it said. The bodies of the dead were taken to their village by two civilians who were not hurt during the encounter.
Nato said it "deeply regrets this unnecessary incident caused by the reckless actions of the vehicle driver".
Separately, the US-led coalition said today its troops killed an insurgent north-east of Kabul while hunting for a militant. The troops were searching compounds in Tagab district in Kapisa province on Friday when they encountered a militant who threatened them, a coalition statement said. It did not say if the person killed was the one they sought.
Also on Friday, police killed a district Taliban commander in northern Takhar province, the Interior Ministry said. The commander, Mullah Osman, was killed after militants attacked a police checkpoint near a coal mine in Kalafgan, the ministry said in a statement.
Afghanistan faces intensifying militancy nearly seven years after a US-led invasion ousted the hard-line Islamic Taliban movement from power.
More than 2,700 people - most of them militants - have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of official figures.
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