By Ewen MacAskill and Mark Tran / Guardian
US-led air strikes killed dozens of Afghans, including women and children, the Red Cross said today as the Pentagon launched a joint investigation into what appeared to be one of the heaviest civilian death tolls at the hands of coalition forces.
Rohul Amin, the governor of Farah province in western Afghanistan, where the bombing took place during a battle on Monday and Tuesday, said he feared 100 civilians had been killed.
The provincial police chief, Abdul Ghafar Watandar, who accused the Taliban of using the civilians as human shields, said the death toll could be even higher. If confirmed, those figures could make the strike the single most deadliest for Afghan civilians since the opening of the campaign to topple the Taliban in 2001.
Jessica Barry, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said one of its teams reached the scene of the air strikes yesterday afternoon. "There were women and there were children who were killed. It seemed they were trying to shelter in houses when they were hit," she said.
The team saw destroyed houses and dozens of dead bodies, providing the first international confirmation of the incident. Among those killed was a first aid volunteer for Afghanistan's Red Crescent, who died along with 13 members of his family, Barry said.
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who is in Washington for talks with Barack Obama, said he would raise the issue of civilians deaths at the White House. "The president has termed the loss of civilians unjustifiable and unacceptable and will raise it with Obama," Karzai's office said.
Watandar said Taliban guerrillas had herded civilians into houses in the villages of Geraani and Ganj Abad, that were then struck by warplanes.
"The fighting was going on in another village, but the Taliban escaped to these two villages, where they used people as human shields. The air strikes killed about 120 civilians and destroyed 17 houses," he said, adding that the death toll was imprecise. Villagers brought about 30 bodies to the provincial capital, Farah city, yesterday to prove that dozens had been killed in the strikes.
US-led forces acknowledge that they were involved in fighting and air strikes in the area. They say they are jointly investigating reports of civilian casualties alongside Afghan authorities.
Civilian deaths are a source of tension between the Afghan and US governments, and Karzai has repeatedly told the US that civilian casualties from air strikes play into the hands of the Taliban.
There were conflicting accounts last night about what had happened. One account suggested children, women and the elderly had gone to the village of Gerani to escape fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan National Army (ANA) but the compounds they sheltered in had been bombed.
A girl named Shafiqa who was wounded in the fighting told Associated Press Television News: "We were at home when the bombing started. Seven members of my family were killed."
A US bombing raid in August last year at Azizabad resulted in 90 civilian deaths. The US originally said no civilians died. It later issued a directive intended to reduce the chances of similar mass civilian deaths.
The inquiry into the bombing was announced on the eve of a summit at the White House today between Obama, Karzai and the Pakistan president, Asif Ali Zardari. Karzai yesterday again called on the US for restraint in bombing areas where civilians might be at risk. Speaking in Washington, he said Obama's strategy would only work if he ensured Afghan civilians were protected. "This war against terrorism will succeed only if we fight it from a higher platform of morality," he said.
A US spokesman in Afghanistan, Colonel Greg Julian, confirmed that US coalition forces had participated in the fighting on Monday night.
"There was an insurgent attack on an ANA group and the ANA called for assistance, and some coalition troops joined them to help fight this group. There was close air support," he told Reuters.
He said US and Afghan officials would head to the site today to investigate the reports of civilian deaths.
Mohammad Nieem Qadderdan, the former top official in the district of Bala Baluk, told AP by phone he saw dozens of bodies when he visited Gerani. "These houses that were full of children and women and elders were bombed by planes. People are digging through rubble with shovels and hands."
Qadderdan said the civilian casualties were "worse than Azizabad".
Obama, on being elected in November, regarded Afghanistan as top of his foreign policy agenda. But it has been superseded by concern over advances by the Taliban in Pakistan. He is planning to rush hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan help fight the Taliban and al-Qaida.
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