U.S.-led airstrike hits Afghan house

JABAR, Afghanistan -- A coalition airstrike destroyed a mud-brick home after a rocket attack on a U.S. base, killing nine people from four generations of an Afghan family including a 6-month-old, officials and relatives said Monday -- one of the latest in a string of civilian deaths that threaten to undermine the government.

It was the third report in two days of U.S. forces killing civilians. The airstrike took place late Sunday in Kapisa province north of the capital, some 12 hours after U.S. Marines opened fire on civilian cars and pedestrians following a suicide bombing in eastern Nangahar province.

In the other incident, an American convoy in Kandahar -- where suicide attacks have become commonplace over the past year -- opened fire Monday on a vehicle that drove too close, killing the driver, said Noor Ahmad, a Kandahar police officer who said he witnessed the shooting. A NATO spokesman said he did not have any information.

Up to 10 Afghans died in the aftermath of the Nangahar suicide attack, which wounded a U.S. Marine. President Hamid Karzai condemned the bombing, "which caused the American forces to fire on civilians," and a statement said relatives of the dead wanted the "perpetrators" brought to justice.

In both the Nangahar and Kapisa incidents, the U.S. military blamed militants for putting innocent lives in danger. A villager in Kapisa, about 50 miles northeast of the capital, confirmed the U.S. account that a rocket was first fired at the American base.

Karzai has repeatedly pleaded for Western troops to show more restraint amid concern that civilian deaths shake domestic support for the foreign military involvement that the president needs to prop up his government, increasingly under threat from a resurgent Taliban.

"These incidents will make people unhappy and upset with the international forces as well as the government of Afghanistan," said Zalmai Mujadedi, head of a parliamentary committee on domestic security. "The incidents in Nangarhar and Kapisa will make the people's confidence in the Afghan and international security forces even lower than before."

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said coalition forces will always respond in self-defense when fired upon: "It is often the enemy that is putting innocent peoples' lives in danger by where they're conducting these attacks on our forces."

The political fallout could resonate widely among Afghans, analysts said.

Civilian deaths "encourage people toward the Taliban and give the Taliban a chance to turn the situation to their advantage," said Mohammad Qasim Akhgar, an Afghan political analyst and spokesman for the non-governmental Freedom of Expression Association.

Human Rights Watch said neither side was taking enough precautions to prevent human casualties and accused the U.S. and international troops of using excessive force.

"International forces don't have carte blanche to shoot anything they want in response to insurgent attacks," said John Sifton, a New York-based researcher for the group.

In the Kapisa province violence, the U.S. military said a rocket was fired at a hilltop U.S. base, prompting return fire by the coalition forces and the airstrike.

Two men with automatic rifles were seen leaving the site of the rocket attack and heading into a compound that was then hit by two 2,000-pound bombs, a military statement said. Rural homes in Afghanistan are built in a compound style with one large outer wall often encasing several small rooms; many families tend to share the same compound.

"These men knowingly endangered civilians by retreating into a populated area while conducting attacks against coalition forces," said Lt. Col. David Accetta, a U.S. military spokesman. "We observed the men entering a compound and that compound was targeted and hit by an airstrike."

The bombs left a large crater of twisted lumber and chunks of mud and killed four women, four children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years, and an 80-year-old man, said Gulam Nabi, a relative of the victims.

Sayad Mohammad Dawood Hashimmi, Kapisa deputy governor, confirmed the nine deaths.

Among those killed were Gulam Nabi's parents, his sister, two female relatives by marriage and four of the extended family's youngest children.

Mohammad Akbar, a resident, said he heard a rocket fired from a mountain behind his village toward a hilltop U.S. base. After that, U.S. mortars were fired on the village, two helicopters flew overhead, and then a warplane dropped the two bombs, destroying one home and damaging another nearby, he said.

In Sunday's violence in Nangahar, an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into a convoy of Marines that U.S. officials said also came under fire from gunmen. As many as 10 people were killed and 34 wounded as the convoy made a frenzied escape, and injured Afghans said the Americans fired on civilian cars and pedestrians as they sped away.

Hundreds of Afghan men held an anti-U.S. demonstration afterward.

A U.S. official called The Associated Press on Monday to say military authorities believe Sunday's suicide bombing was a "clearly planned, orchestrated attack" that included enemy fire on the convoy.

The official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said authorities believed that criminal elements orchestrated the attack because of eradication efforts against the region's profitable opium poppy crop.

He said there was "no doubt in the minds of Marines on the ground that they were being fired on." The official said Afghan casualties could have been caused by militants or by U.S. gunfire.

However, two senior provincial Afghan officials who also asked not to be named said they had found no evidence to corroborate the U.S. military's claim that militants fired on the Americans. An AP reporter who spoke with more than a dozen witnesses could not find anyone who said they saw or heard incoming militant gunfire.

Akhtyar Gul, who ran outside after the suicide bombing, said he saw Americans firing in all directions.

"There was nobody on the street, nobody on the road to fire on the Americans," said Gul. "The only firing that came toward us was from these American vehicles."

The U.S. official also questioned how a large demonstration could develop so quickly, suggesting it was planned. But witnesses said the demonstration took place more than three miles west of the bombing and only after the U.S. convoy had driven by shooting at civilian cars and pedestrians.

Gul Batikoti, 25, said no one encouraged the Afghans to demonstrate.

"Ten minutes after the vehicles left, all the angry people who were collecting the injured people and also carrying the dead bodies, they were shouting, they were very angry," he said.

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Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez contributed to this story from Nangarhar province, Amir Shah from Jabar and Jason Straziuso from Kabul.