Afghanistan: NATO killed 65 civilians, including 40 children

Tribal leaders had alleged that dozens of civilians were killed in the operation in Kunar province, which involved rocket and air strikes, The Associated Press reported.

The incident inflamed tensions between the Afghan government and NATO forces, and both sides opened investigations.

Civilian deaths have been increasing in recent months.

Allegations of civilian deaths from NATO forces often cause much anger in Afghanistan.

NATO has claimed that video of Kunar operations on Feb. 17 -- the main event of more than three days of fighting -- showed troops targeting and killing dozens of insurgents, not civilians.

However, the Afghan team investigating the incident found that 65 civilians had been killed, including 40 children age 13 and under, said Shahzada Masoud, one of the investigators. The group presented its findings Sunday to President Hamid Karzai.

Investigators said they compiled a list of names and ages of the victims, and planned to release them but were not prepared to do so Sunday.

Karzai's office said he was concerned by the findings.

The team reached its conclusions after four days of interviews with local authorities, residents, hospital officials and security forces, said Masoud, who is Karzai's tribal affairs adviser.

They did not visit the scene of the attack but had people from the villages come to the provincial capital to be interviewed. The main area — called Helgal — is considered very dangerous and is rarely visited by government officials.

Masoud said the dead had already been buried, but that he had reports of 75 graves.

The team did not look into the number of militants killed or consider the NATO footage since it was only asked to identify civilian deaths, Masoud said.

The team shared its findings with NATO investigators in Kunar, but could not reconcile the differences. ""They (NATO officials) told us that there might be civilian casualties as a result of this operation but not the high number we have found,"" he said.

A recent UN report documented 2,412 conflict-related civilian deaths in the first 10 months of 2010. More than three-quarters of them were caused by militant activity, a 25 percent increase from the same period in 2009, the report said. At the same time, civilian casualties attributed to pro-government forces, including those from the NATO coalition, decreased.

A spate of insurgent attacks in recent weeks have killed scores of civilians, weakening the Taliban's assertion that they try to avoid civilian casualties in their attacks on government and NATO forces.

In Sunday's deadliest attack, twin blasts in southern Afghanistan killed eight people who had gathered for an illegal dog fight.

The explosion in Kandahar province's Arghandab district also wounded five police who had gone to break up the group, said district Police Chief Niaz Mohammad. Though dog fights are against the law in Afghanistan, they are still common and often ignored by the authorities.

Photo: Afghan protestors shout anti-U.S. slogans as they hold posters of injured children in Jalalabad, Aug. 19, 2010. (AP file photo)