KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.S. military investigation concluded yesterday that only five to seven civilians and 30 to 35 Taliban were killed in an airstrike operation in western Afghanistan last month, far fewer than the 90 civilians that the Afghan government and the United Nations found in their preliminary investigations. Two civilians were also wounded, the U.S. command said in a statement.
The military investigation was a standard internal one and comes ahead of a joint investigation it has agreed to conduct with the United Nations and the Afghan government to try to reconcile the vastly differing accounts of what happened early Aug. 22 in the village of Azizabad and how many people died.
U.S. officials say they face significant challenges in identifying Taliban fighters, who mix easily with the general population.
"The enemy knowingly hides behind women and children; they dress in burqas," Maj. Gen. Jeffery J. Schloesser told the Associated Press on Monday. "The enemy makes it extraordinarily difficult to avoid civilian casualties. We don't even know [civilian casualties occurred] until the fighting is over."
In addition, U.S. officials have long said that Taliban militants pressure Afghan villagers to falsely claim civilian casualties, information warfare that does serious damage to the reputations of the United States, NATO and the Western-backed Afghan government.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the operation at the time and dismissed two Afghan commanders for what he called dereliction of duty and concealing the truth, after a government delegation to the area had concluded that large numbers of women and children died in the airstrike operation.
The U.N. special representative in Afghanistan also expressed grave concern at the civilian casualties and said a human rights team had found convincing evidence that 90 people had been killed, 60 of them children. Since then the United Nations has refused further comment pending conclusion of investigations.
The U.S. military command, which had originally reported a successful operation that killed 25 militants, then announced that it was opening an investigation into the incident.
Its conclusions yesterday did not differ much from the first military reports. The operation was a planned offensive conducted in Herat province, and Afghan and U.S. forces came under fire as they approached their objective, the statement said. The intensity of the fire on them justified using small-arms and close air support, it said.
The military investigator conducted interviews with 30 Afghan and American participants in the operation and reviewed reports made by ground and air personnel during the engagement, the statement said. The investigator also used video taken during the engagement, photos taken at the scene, and weapons, explosives and intelligence materials collected at the site, some of which suggested militants were planning an attack on a nearby U.S. base. "The engagement disrupted any planned attack," the statement said.
The investigation found that 30 to 35 Taliban militants were killed, including evidence suggesting a known Taliban commander, Mullah Sadiq, was among them.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
