Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Monday that NATO troops had fired a rocket that killed 52 “innocent” villagers in southern Afghanistan.
An investigation by the National Directorate of Security found that a house in Helmand province's Sangin district was hit on Friday “by a rocket launched by NATO/ISAF troops, leaving 52 civilians dead, including women and children,” a statement from Mr. Karzai's office said.
Mr. Karzai's statement came three days after Friday's attack on Regey village, and followed repeated denials by officials of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that their forces were involved in the incident.
Reports surfaced on Saturday that a helicopter gunship fired on villagers who had been told by insurgents to leave their homes as a firefight with ISAF troops was imminent.
According to witness accounts, men, women and children fled to Regey village and were fired on by helicopter gunships as they took cover.
Abdul Ghafar (45) told AFP he lost “two daughters and one son and two sisters” in the attack.
He and six other families fled to Regey, about 500 metres from their village of Ishaqzai, after being warned about an imminent battle, he said. Men and women took shelter in separate compounds, he said, ahead of an expected firefight between Taliban and NATO troops around 4.30 p.m. (1200 GMT). “Helicopters started firing on the compound killing almost everyone inside,” he said, speaking at the Mirwais hospital in Kandahar city. “We rushed to the house and there were eight children wounded and around 40 to 50 others killed,” he said.
ISAF spokesman Colonel Wayne Shanks said the location of the reported deaths was “several kilometres away from where we had engaged enemy fighters”. “We found no evidence of civilian casualties,” he said.
