As NATO continues to shift its Afghanistan strategy away from pursuing Taliban insurgents and towards protecting the civilian population, it was forced Monday to announce yet another case where civilians were killed by coalition fire.
In what Afghan president Hamid Karzai called an "unjustifiable" attack, an air strike in southern Afghanistan struck a convoy - reportedly just two Toyota Land Cruisers and a truck - killing upwards of two dozen people while injuring others. The group included women and children, according to the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO coalition's formal name.
Casualty totals varied. The Ministry of Interior said initially that 21 had been killed, while President Hamid Karzai's office said late Monday that 27 civilians - down from its initial report of 33 - had died. Another 14 were said to be injured.
ISAF said the bombing took place in Uruzgan province, directly north of Kandahar, while Mr. Karzai's office said it was in Dai Kondi, which sits north of Uruzgan.
"Initial reports indicate that NATO fired Sunday on a convoy of three vehicles ... killing at least [27]civilians including four women and one child, and injuring 12 others while they were on their way to Kandahar," a statement by the Afghan Council of Ministers, released by Mr. Karzai's office, said.
The bombing run was initially called against a group of insurgents "believed to be en route to attack a joint Afghan-ISAF unit," a coalition statement said. "After the joint ground force arrived at the scene and found women and children, they transported the wounded to medical treatment facilities."
The Afghanistan Council of Ministers said it was "condemning the attack in the strongest terms possible."
"Afghanistan's council of ministers strongly urges the NATO forces to closely coordinate and exercise maximum care before conducting any military operations so that any possible mistakes that may result in harming civilians - considered to be a major obstacle for an effective counterterrorism effort - can be avoided."
ISAF says it has ordered an investigation. It recently ordered one after a bombing run in another province killed seven men in Afghan National Police uniforms, in what is believed to be a case where the bombing run missed its target.
ISAF also investigated when a pair of rockets struck a home eight days ago, killing 12 civilians. After first saying the rockets misfired, ISAF later revealed they were, in fact, aimed at the house, which they believed was housing insurgents. The rocket system is now back in use.
"...Inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We will re-double our efforts to regain this trust," acknowledged General Stanley McChrystal, the ISAF commander, in a released statement Monday.
"We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives..."
In Operation Moshtarak, the ongoing massive ISAF assault in nearby Helmand province, soldiers have also shot and killed at least four civilians in four separate incidents, who they believed to be approaching coalition troops with a bomb.
NATO has confirmed the 16 civilian deaths as part of Operation Moshtarak, though the Afghan Organization for Human Rights and Environmental Protection said recently the number is at least 22, excluding the ANP deaths and Sunday's bombing, both events that were not a part of Operation Moshtarak.
"NATO and coalition forces must be very careful, very exact, about bombardment," AOHREP director Abdul Rahman Hotaki Mr. Hotaki said late last week.
On Saturday, Mr. Karzai admonished NATO troops for not doing enough to protect civilian lives. During a speech at the opening session of the Afghan parliament, Mr. Karzai called for extra caution on the part of NATO.
"We need to reach the point where there are no civilian casualties," Mr. Karzai said. "Our effort and our criticism will continue until we reach that goal."
A total of 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed last year, the highest number in any year of the eight-year war, according to a UN report. But deaths attributed to NATO troops dropped nearly 30 per cent as a result of the new rules, it said.
In an interview last week after the rocket attack, Canadian Brigadier General Craig King, who is in charge of ISAF's advance planning for the southern region where the civilian deaths are occurring, said troops are under constant threat while weighing whether to open fire or not.
"It's very difficult. When you've got an element, the enemy force that you're fighting embeds itself among a civilian population and chooses that as a tactic, it poses some really significant challenges to the Afghan coalition force that's going in to clear [an area] I would say that there has been a tremendous amount of restraint shown in terms of the application of violence, notwithstanding the [rocket attack]that happened which everyone aggress was a tragic occurrence," Brig.-Gen. King said.
"Regrettably, these kinds of things, these tragic events, can happen. But it's an aspect of this fight, of modern operations, that the managers of violence do really try to apply some restraint there.... There's some who would think it's shoot first, ask questions later. But clearly there's a lot of discipline being applied there."
With a report from The Associated Press