U.N. Finds Airstrike Killed 90 Afghans

At least 90 percent of all aircraft being used in the Afghan war belong to U.S. forces operating under their own command structure. "Civilian deaths are not a NATO problem," said Marc Garlasco, a military analyst at New York-based Human Rights Watch. "Civilian casualties are primarily being caused in airstrikes in support of the counterterrorism mission that the United States is running completely separate from the NATO-run counterinsurgency conflict," said Garlasco, who has compiled a report on civilian deaths from airstrikes to be published next month.

Last year, as Taliban attacks increased, the number of civilian deaths caused by airstrikes spiked sharply, from 116 killed in 2006 to 321 in 2007, according to figures issued by the U.S. Air Forces Central Command. The number of sorties increased by about one-third in 2007, and the amount of munitions that were dropped more than doubled, according to the data.

Garlasco said the amount of bombs dropped by U.S. airstrikes in June (317,000 pounds) and July (270,000 pounds) is equivalent to the total tonnage dropped in 2006. The vast majority of the strikes, Garlasco said, are unplanned missions called in by U.S. Special Operations ground forces fighting Taliban units or because a "target of opportunity" is located through on-the-ground intelligence.

Unlike in Iraq, where U.S. forces frequently use 250-pound bombs to make attacks more precise, Garlasco said American troops in Afghanistan "are still using a lot of" 2,000-pound bombs.

The Herat bombing occurred around midnight after U.S. Special Operations forces and Afghan troops led a raid on a compound in the town of Azizabad where they said they thought a Taliban commander was holding a meeting with supporters. U.S. military officials said at least 30 insurgents were killed, including the commander, who is known as Mullah Siddiq.

Afghan officials in Herat said the bombing occurred as dozens of villagers gathered for a memorial ceremony for a villager who was killed last year. Ahmed Dehzad, one of the province's parliamentary representatives, said that local officials had received reports of Taliban activity in the vicinity several days before the ceremony but that coalition forces did not issue a warning before the attack on a compound near where the ceremony was held.

A spokesman for the Afghan army's western command said Saturday that an army investigation into the incident confirmed that about 60 children and 19 women had been killed in the airstrike. The spokesman, Raouf Ahmedi, said there was no evidence that any of those killed had ties to the Taliban.

The U.N. investigators found that at least 15 people were injured in the operation.

A little more than a day after the raid, a U.S. military spokeswoman dismissed as "outrageous" the Afghan government's assertions that scores of civilians had been killed in the attack. Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green said U.S. forces who inspected the site afterward found that five civilians had been killed.

A U.S. official in Washington, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Taliban has become adept at spreading false intelligence to draw U.S. strikes on civilians. "The fact is that the Taliban now has pretty good insight into where we're picking up information and how we're developing it into actionable intelligence," the official said. "They've figured out a way to misguide us."

DeYoung reported from Washington. Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations and special correspondent Javed Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report.