News / Afghanistan

UN probing Afghan civilian casualties from US strikes

Monday, 13 May 2019 2:03 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 13 May 2019 6:25 PM ]

The file photo, taken on July 7, 2018, shows smoke rising after an airstrike in Deh Bala district in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar. (By AFP)

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) is investigating allegations of civilian casualties following US airstrikes in Farah and Nimroz provinces.

In a statement released on Monday, the mission said the "aerial operations" were conducted "against reported drug manufacturing facilities" and that it was "actively looking into" those allegations.

"The locations are not easily accessible and there are numerous operational challenges to the verification" of civilians being harmed, UNAMA said.

Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said "150 Taliban terrorists were killed, 40 wounded" in the Farah operations. However, the Taliban denied the facilities were used for drugs and claimed "up to 100" civilians had been killed.

Last month, the mission published a report saying civilians are for the first time being killed in greater numbers by US and pro-government forces than by the Taliban and other militant groups.

"There can be absolutely no justification for deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians," Tadamichi Yamamoto, UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, said in the UNAMA statement.

"It is particularly egregious that a premeditated act of extreme violence was conducted against a development agency where civilians were striving to improve the lives of all citizens."

PressTV-Airstrikes kill over 30 people in southeast Afghanistan

Dozens of people have been killed in the latest airstrikes, believed to have been carried out by US warplanes, in the Afghan province of Ghazni.

The United States has recently stepped up its air raids in an attempt to exert pressure on the Taliban to accept a negotiated end to its 18-year insurgency.

The UN mission in Afghanistan recorded 649 civilian casualties as a result of aerial attacks in the first nine months of last year, the highest number in any year since systematic recording began in 2009.