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Karzai: NATO still causes too many civilian deaths

20 February 2010 20:39 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. U.S. Marines and Afghan squads exchanged sustained gunfire with insurgents shooting from homes where families huddled Saturday, as President Hamid Karzai called on coalition troops to do more to prevent civilian deaths in their operations to secure a Taliban stronghold, APA reports citing â€œAssociated Press.â€

At the opening session of the Afghan parliament in Kabul, Karzai said NATOâ€™s efforts to prevent civilian deaths during its operations were insufficient because innocent people keep dying.

He also repeated his call to Taliban fighters to renounce al-Qaida and join with the government â€” an appeal that may resonate more after recent arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan.

NATO forces have repeatedly said they want to prevent civilian casualties, but acknowledged that it is not always possible. On Saturday, the coalition reported that its troops killed another civilian in Marjah, bringing the civilian death toll from the operation to at least 16.

NATO troops fired on the man after he dropped a box that they believed held a bomb and started running toward them, NATO said. Afterward, they found the box contained materials that could have been used to make a bomb, but no explosive.

Despite the suspicious materials, NATO categorized the dead man as a civilian.
The week-old operation in Marjah is a major test of a new NATO strategy that stresses protecting civilians over routing insurgents as quickly as possible.

Speaking at Princeton University on Saturday, Army Gen. David Petraeus said the policy shift took away the Talibanâ€™s use of civilian deaths as propaganda.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, a number of high-profile Taliban arrests have been made in recent weeks and a CIA missile strike there killed the brother of a Taliban commander.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said six people had been killed by roadside bombs in two separate incidents in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

Insurgents also attacked police clearing a poppy field in Helmandâ€™s Nari Saraj district, killing six officers, provincial spokesman Daoud Ahmadi said.