led coalition forces killed 25 Taleban insurgents and eight civilians after an ambush in southern Afghanistan, the US military said on Monday. The issue of civilian casualties has led to a rift between Afghanistan and its Western allies with President Hamid Karzai saying on Sunday that foreign airstrikes had only succeeded in killing ordinary Afghans and would not defeat the insurgency. The Taleban launched multiple ambushes on a patrol in the Khas Uruzgan district of Uruzgan province on Sunday, the US military said in a statement. The militants “then fled into a neighboring compound where they held 11 non-combatants hostage, including several children and an infant,” it said. The troops called in an airstrike, but said they did not know there were civilians in the building. International forces are permitted to call in airstrikes when they are under attack even if they cannot be 100-percent sure there are no civilians in the area and this is where most mistakes are made, NATO officials say. Foreign forces say they do their very best to avoid killing innocent bystanders, but the perception among many, if not most, Afghans is that the troops do not take enough care and support for the presence of international troops is waning.
