EIGHTY Afghan civilians were murdered in US and British air strikes last Friday in the Gereshk district of Helmand province in Afghanistan.
Three British soldiers and three Afghan civilians were wounded and one UK soldier was killed yesterday, Gereshk mayor Dur Ali Shah said, as the Taleban hit back.
The district’s deputy police chief Amanullah said: ‘So far we have found 80 dead bodies of civilians including women and children.
‘The civilian casualties may go on to rise as a search for dead bodies is continuing.’
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commented that it was aware there were ‘probably’ some civilian casualties, but suggested the toll might be much lower.
But one villager told reporters: ‘Six houses have been bombed, three of them have been reduced to rubble.’
Feda Mohammad added that ‘about 100 were dead and wounded’.
British troops called up the air strikes near the village of Haidar Abad, after intense fighting Friday in which they had come under heavy attack.
In a survey afterwards, ISAF spokesman Major Chris Belcher said, ‘The remains of some people who apparently were civilians were found among insurgent fighters who were killed in firing positions in a trench line.’
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed yesterday that a soldier from 1st Battalion, The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters was killed near to the village of Qaleh-e-Gaz, south-west of Sangin, northern Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.
He died of wounds when joint US-UK forces and Afghan puppet forces attacked a group of Taleban fighters.
l Israeli forces launched three air strikes in the Gaza Strip yesterday morning, killing seven Palestinians, including a leading Islamic Jihad militant, Raed Ghannam.
Three militants were killed in the first attack, which struck a vehicle in Khan Yunis. Four civilians were also hurt, rescue workers said.
Hours later, four Palestinians were killed in a second Israeli strike on a metal workshop in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.
The workshop owner Salah Qufa, 46, his 23-year-old son Iyad and a 40-year-old civilian were killed and two other people were wounded, medics said.
The third strike targeted the same workshop, Palestinian witnesses said, and at least four people were injured.
l US and puppet Iraqi troops, backed by helicopter gunships, yesterday claimed to have killed 26 Al Sadr movement militants during a raid on Baghdad’s Sadr City.
Residents were awakened before dawn by the sound of rockets slamming into buildings and machine gun fire echoing off the concrete apartment blocks of the impoverished neighbourhood.
