Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday condemned a US-led coalition airstrike his government says killed 76 civilians, most of them women and children. Civilian casualties are an emotive issue for Afghans, many of whom feel foreign forces take too little care when launching air strikes. Support for the presence of international troops is waning and anti-US demonstrations broke out on Saturday. The issue has also led to a rift between the Afghan government and its Western backers, with Karzai saying recently that foreign air strikes have achieved nothing but the deaths of civilians. “Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly condemns the uncoordinated airstrike by coalition forces in Shindand district of Herat province which resulted in the death of at least 70 people including women and children,” the president's office said in a statement. The US military says only armed Taleban militants were killed in Friday's attack. Hundreds of people demonstrated in Shindand district on Saturday, saying Americans should withdraw from the area. “We will continue our demonstration till the international community listens to us and bring those who carried out yesterday's attack to justice,” village elder Shah Nawaz told Reuters. Nearly 700 civilians were killed in the first six months of this year, 255 of them by Afghan government and international troops, the rest by Taleban militants, the United Nations says. Aircraft targeted a known Taleban commander in the district early Friday after Afghan and coalition forces came under attack from insurgents, the US military said. Thirty militants, including a Taleban commander, were killed in the strike and only two civilians had been wounded, it said. The Afghan Interior Ministry said coalition forces bombarded the Azizabad area of Shindand district on Friday, killing 76 civilians, including 19 women, seven men and the rest children under the age of 15. The US military said it was aware of allegations of civilian casualties but said those killed were militants. “Our reports from our own forces on the ground are only, so far, that those killed in the strikes were 30 and they were all militants,” said a US military spokesman. “All allegations of civilian casualties are taken very seriously,” the US military said in a statement. “An investigation has been directed.” The demonstrations erupted in Shindand after Afghan soldiers arrived in the area to bring aid to the victim's families, Nawaz said, adding Afghan soldiers fired shots into the air and wounded six people after the crowd threw stones.
