31 Dec 2009

Western troops accused of executing 10 Afghan civilians, including children

Afghan investigators today accused US-led troops of dragging ten civilians from their beds and shooting them dead during a night raid.

Officials said that eight children and teenagers were among the dead and all but one of the victims were from the same family. The reports led to angry protests in Kabul and Jalalabad, with children as young as 10 chanting “Death to America” and demanding foreign forces leave Afghanistan.

President Karzai sent a team of investigators to Narang district, in Kunar province, after reports emerged of a massacre. “The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane on Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and 10, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” a statement on President Karzai’s website said.

Asked if the people were shot outside their homes, the President’s spokesman Waheed Omar said: “That is our understanding.” Local elders confirmed that ten people were killed, but their accounts of raid differed.

Western troops accused of executing 10 Afghan civilians, including children « Aletho News