NATO strike said to kill Afghan troops

NATO strike said to kill Afghan troops

KABUL -- Afghan officials said yesterday that a NATO airstrike inadvertently killed several Afghan soldiers and policemen a day earlier in northwestern Afghanistan.

The airstrike took place amid fighting in Badghis province as Afghan and U.S. troops were looking for two U.S. paratroopers who disappeared Wednesday.

The U.S. military said the soldiers on the search operation came under an attack that killed four Afghan soldiers and two policemen, and wounded five American soldiers and 17 Afghan security forces.

Afghan officials said the troops were killed in a NATO airstrike that hit a coalition base in the area or hit near it. The district's mayor, Abdul Shukor, put the death toll at 20 -- 6 Afghan soldiers, 2 policemen and 12 civilians. Shukor described the area of the bombing as a military checkpoint near a warehouse.

A NATO statement said authorities were investigating whether "close air support" caused some of the casualties. A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Todd Vician, said earlier yesterday that the casualties resulted from a "hostile engagement, not an accident." He said he had no reports of civilian casualties.

The Taliban said earlier that the two soldiers had drowned and that it had found the bodies. A parliament member from Badghis, Amir Tawakal, said the soldiers drowned while fishing. U.S. officials did not confirm that the soldiers had died.

Vician said that he did not know whether the two 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers were on foot or in their vehicles when they disappeared.

Elsewhere, the deputy governor of the southern province of Zabul, Ali Khail, said NATO forces raided an office of the Afghan Red Crescent in the city of Qalat early yesterday, killing a security guard and arresting three local Red Crescent employees.

NATO issued a statement saying coalition forces killed a militant and arrested a few other suspected militants, including someone who was helping insurgents transport weapons and bomb-making materials to the area.