A foreign airstrike killed nine Afghan policemen in western Afghanistan overnight after a clash in which both sides mistook the other for Taliban militants, Afghan officials said today.
The incident is certain to reinforce Afghan perceptions that international troops do not take enough care to avoid hurting innocents and comes after a string of mistakes that Afghan officials say killed dozens of civilians.
Clashes broke out between Afghan police and international troops in the Anar Dara district of Farah province, with both sides thinking the other were Taliban militants, the deputy provincial governor Mohammad Younus Rasuli said.
The foreign troops called in airstrikes on the police post that killed nine policemen and wounded four others, including the district police chief, he said.
Both Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the separate US-led coalition force in Afghanistan said they were aware of an incident in Farah, but could not confirm any details of what had happened.
Meanwhile, Nato-led forces accidentally killed four Afghan civilians in an overnight mortar attack in eastern province of Paktika, close to the Pakistani border, the alliance said today.
"An ISAF unit fired two mortar rounds, which landed nearly 1 km away from the intended target," ISAF said in a statement. "Shortly afterwards wounded civilians presented themselves for treatment at an ISAF base, and a helicopter medical evacuation mission was immediately launched to assist."
There were another three unconfirmed deaths, it said, and four civilians were also wounded in the attack.
"ISAF deeply regrets this accident, and an investigation as to the exact circumstances of this tragic event is now under way," the statement said.
Afghan officials say US-led coalition airstrikes killed more than 60 Afghan civilians, many of them women and children, in the east of the country earlier this month. US forces have launched investigations into the incidents.
The ISAF has denied reports by Afghan officials that it killed 50 civilians in the west of the country last week
Reuters