Kabul, September 05: NATO investigators sought to determine Saturday if any of the scores of people killed in a U.S. airstrike on two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban were civilians trying to siphon fuel, while a bomb blast targeted German troops in the same northern Afghan province.
The 10-member investigative team flew over the site on the Kunduz river where a U.S. jet hit the tankers before dawn Friday with two 500-pound (225-kilogram) bombs, triggering a fireball that killed up to 70 people.
Later, the team led by U.S. Rear Admiral Gregory J. Smith, NATO’s director of communications in Kabul, spoke to two injured villagers in the Kunduz hospital, including a boy and a farmer with shrapnel wounds. Both said they were not at the river with the tanker trucks when the bombs fell but were standing a long distance away.
“We don’t yet know how many civilians” were at the site of the blast, Smith said. “Unfortunately, we can’t get to every village.”
A bomb blast, meanwhile, hit a German military convoy Saturday, damaging at least one vehicle. The provincial police chief, Abdullah Razaq Yaqoobi, said a suicide car bomb caused the blast, though German military officials blamed a roadside bomb.
An AP reporter at a nearby German base said the blast created a shock wave that could be felt inside the base. German officials said four soldiers were wounded in the attack, the AP reporter said.
NATO said Friday’s airstrike targeted militants who had hijacked two tankers carrying fuel to its forces in Kabul, but Afghan officials said dozens of villagers also died in the blasts as they tried to retrieve fuel from the tankers.
The deputy U.N. representative to Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, said Saturday he was “very concerned” about the reports.
“Steps must also be taken to examine what happened and why an airstrike was employed in circumstances where it was hard to determine with certainty that civilians were not present,” Galbraith said.
The German military, whose troops called in the strike, said they feared the hijackers would use the trucks to carry out a suicide attack against its base nearby.
The airstrike came despite efforts by the top U.S. general in Afghanistan to curb use of air power and reduce civilian casualties, which have strained relations between the NATO force and the Afghan government.
Germany said 57 fighters were killed and no civilians were believed in the area at the time, based on surveillance of the tankers by a drone aircraft. NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, however, acknowledged some civilians may have died, and the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government announced a joint investigation.
Local government spokesman Mohammad Yawar estimated that more than 70 people were killed, at least 45 of them militants. Investigators were trying to account for the others, he said.
The local governor, Mohammad Omar, said 72 were killed and 15 wounded. He said about 30 of the dead were identified as insurgents, including four Chechens and a local Taliban commander. The rest were probably fighters or their relatives, he said.
Many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, and villagers buried some in a mass grave.
—–Agencies