Kabul, November 29: NATO helicopters on Monday fired four rockets into houses in Zhari district of Kandahar, killing three women and injuring two men, said Zalmai Ayoubi, the provincial governor’s spokesman, on Tuesday.
The Afghan official added that the US-led alliance had confirmed the attack.
Nine civilians, most of them children, were also killed in the same district during a NATO airstrike last week.
In another attack on Tuesday, US-led forces raided a house in Surkh Rod district of the Nangarhar province and killed two brothers.
NATO said in a statement that its forces carried out the operation in collaboration with Afghan forces. It claimed that the fatalities were “militants,” although locals have rejected the claim.
The loss of civilian lives at the hand of foreign forces has dramatically increased anti-American sentiments in Afghanistan.
A United Nations report on Afghanistan issued on September 28 said that the average monthly number of security incidents recorded for the year through the end of August has risen nearly 40 percent.
The report also said civilian casualties, already at record levels in the first six months of the year, rose 5 percent between June and August 2011 compared with the same three-month period in 2010.
—-Agencies