Karzai tells Obama to halt civilian casualties

THE Afghan president yesterday demanded that President-elect Barack Obama put an end to civilian casualties, as villagers said US warplanes bombed a wedding party, killing 37 people, nearly all of them women and children.

The US military said it was investigating, and a villager said American forces had given them permission to bury the dead, which he said included 23 children and 10 women. A US spokesman added that “if innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologise and express our condolences.”

The bombing on Monday afternoon of the remote village of Wech Baghtu in the southern province of Kandahar destroyed an Afghan housing complex where women and children had gathered to celebrate, villagers said. Body parts littered the wreckage and nearby farm animals lay dead.

Villager Abdul Jalil, a 37-year-old grape farmer whose niece was getting married, told an Associated Press reporter at the scene of the bombing that US troops and Taliban fighters had been fighting about a half mile from his home.

Fighter aircraft destroyed his compound and killed 37 people, including 23 children, 10 women and four men, Jalil said.

No Afghan officials could immediately confirm the number of casualties, which happened in a remote and dangerous part of Kandahar province. However, Afghan president Hamid Karzai referred to the deaths at a news conference yesterday held to congratulate Barack Obama on his presidential election victory.

Karzai said he hopes the election will “bring peace to Afghanistan, life to Afghanistan and prosperity to the Afghan people and the rest of the world.” He applauded America for its “courage” in electing Obama. He also used the occasion to press Obama to prevent civilian casualties in operations by foreign forces, saying air strikes had killed people in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province.

“Our demand is that there will be no civilian casualties in Afghanistan. We cannot win the fight against terrorism with air strikes,” Karzai said. “This is my first demand of the new president of the United States — to put an end to civilian casualties.”

The alleged air strikes come only three months after the Afghan government found that a US operation killed some 90 civilians in western Afghanistan.