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A US-led raid against Taliban militants causing more civilian deaths in Afghanistan has intensified ill feelings for both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the United States.
The operation causing the latest controversy happened this week in eastern Laghman province. The U.S. military said on Saturday that troops, backed by air support, had killed 15 militants in an overnight operation.
Assadullah Wafa, a Karzai adviser investigating the deaths, said on Sunday that “16 civilians, many of them children and women, were killed” in the operation.
Karzai himself says bombing villages and causing civilian deaths “will not bear any progress in the war against terrorism.”
Nearly 700 civilians were killed in operations by foreign and Afghan forces against the militants until October last year, according to a national human rights body based on a U.N. estimate.
Karzai, who has repeatedly urged foreign troops to coordinate operations with his government, last week termed civilian deaths as a main source of Afghanistan’s instability.
