KABUL, Afghanistan – The U.S. military on Monday expressed regret over the deaths of seven Afghan children in an airstrike a day earlier but blamed Islamic insurgents for preventing the youngsters from leaving the compound that was hit.
American officials said U.S.-led coalition forces were unaware of the presence of noncombatants inside the compound in Paktika province, which also contained a mosque and an Islamic seminary.
Seven boys under the age of 16, including at least one as young as 10, were killed in Sunday’s airstrike, according to Afghan officials. Paktika Gov. Akhram Akhpelwak said local Afghan officials were not given advance notice of Western troops’ plans to hit the compound.
Accidental civilian deaths at the hands of coalition troops have become a highly emotional issue in Afghanistan. The country’s pro-Western president, Hamid Karzai, has appealed repeatedly for greater caution in military operations in civilian areas, but public anger at his government is growing as well.
The compound, in the Zargun Shah district of Paktika province, in Afghanistan’s southeast, was believed to have been occupied by militants linked to al-Qaida, the military said in a statement. It said several militants were killed in addition to the young boys.
Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the coalition, said surviving children told authorities they were forcibly kept inside the compound by insurgents.
“The people in the area … understand that the incident was the result of hoodlums’ activity in the area,” he said.
A full day of surveillance before the airstrike yielded no sign of the youngsters’ presence, Belcher said.
U.S. military officials traveled to the province to meet with local authorities and express regret over the deaths. Afghan human-rights officials, who have been strongly critical of several other military operations this year that resulted in multiple civilian deaths, said they were investigating the incident.
More than 100 people, including militants, civilians and police, have died in three days of clashes between NATO forces and Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials told the Associated Press on Monday.
Some preliminary estimates of the death toll exceeded 200 people, but precise numbers were not immediately available because of the continued fighting in Uruzgan province.
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