KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec 22, (Agencies): A provincial governor in Afghanistan said Wednesday that a battle between NATO and the Taleban the previous day had killed three women and two children, and called on the coalition to “pay attention” to civilian casualties.
Afghan officials have often spoken out about civilian deaths, arguing that the international forces are not being careful enough to avoid such casualties as the war nears its tenth year. Insurgents also try to use the civilian death toll as a way of rallying support for their cause.
Also Wednesday, NATO said that a leader of the Haqqani network — militants who operate out of western Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan — was killed in a Dec. 18 operation launched by international forces and their Afghan counterparts in the eastern Khost province.
In Helmand, a Taleban stronghold and scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the war, the provincial governor’s office said the five civilians died Tuesday as militants attacked coalition forces in the Sangin district. Seven insurgents were killed in the battle, according to the statement from the governor’s office.
NATO has said it was investigating the civilian fatalities and that it exercises the utmost caution during operations to minimize such occurrences. The coalition said Tuesday that insurgents were using a civilian home to attack its forces and that the insurgents launched their attack with assault rifles and a machine gun. NATO troops returned fire and used mortars.
A UN report this month said that Afghan civilian casualties increased by 20 percent in the first 10 months of 2010, compared with the same period a year earlier. It said there were at least 6,215 conflict-related civilian casualties — 2,412 deaths and 3,803 injuries.
But the UN report also found that civilian casualties attributed to NATO and pro-government forces dropped by 18 percent compared to the first 10 months of 2009.
The governor’s office said it wants NATO “to pay attention to civilian causalities during operations and prevent civilian causalities.”
Meanwhile, Iran is preventing hundreds of fuel tankers from crossing into Afghanistan and supplying US-led NATO troops fighting the Taleban, senior officials in Kabul said Wednesday.
Around 1,600 trucks have been prevented from crossing for three weeks and the situation threatens to push up fuel prices, which have already skyrocketed in recent days, at the start of winter.
Although Kabul says the tankers would be used to supply ordinary Afghans, deputy commerce minister Mohammad Sharif Sharifi told AFP that Iranian officials were sceptical.
“I confirm that Iranian officials have been preventing around 1,600 fuel tankers from crossing into Afghanistan for 20 days,” he said.
“They (Iran) have not officially given us any reason for this blockade but in a meeting that I had with the Iranian commerce attache in Kabul, he said that the Iranian government believes these tankers were going to supply foreign troops in Afghanistan.”
Sharifi added that unless the situation was resolved, it could cause “serious problems including an increase in fuel prices.”
The blockades have occurred at a number of locations, including the main Afghan-Iranian border crossing at Islam Qalah in the western province of Herat.
Afghanistan’s foreign ministry says it is holding talks with Iranian officials in a bid to convince them that the fuel is not for military use.
“We have taken all necessary measures to help lift the ban,” said foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Faqiri.
“We have told Iranian officials through diplomatic channels in Kabul and Tehran that it is the people of Afghanistan who will suffer from this blockade.”
Around 30 percent of Afghanistan’s fuel is thought to come through transport routes from Iran, with much of the rest coming through the central Asian republics which border Afghanistan.