Afghan officials claim 2 killed in NATO strike

[December 23, 2010]  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Two senior local officials in northern Afghanistan say a NATO helicopter has opened fire on a convoy of cars, killing a police officer and a civilian.

Faryab province police chief Khalil Andarabi and the governor's spokesman, Ahmad Jawed Bedar, say the convoy was headed to a lunch near the provincial capital of Maimana when its was strafed by a NATO helicopter.

They identified the civilian killed as Mohammad Aminuddin, the brother of former parliament member Sarajuddin Mozafari. Andarabi said two policemen and one civilian were also wounded in the strike.

NATO said Thursday it did not have any immediate reports of a helicopter strike in Faryab, but did have a report of an insurgent roadside bombing targeting police forces there.

The coalition said it would look into the incident.

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THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE.
AP's earlier story is below.

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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A suicide bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz Thursday, killing one police officer, officials said, days after another suicide attack against local security forces there killed nine.

The blast, which struck early in the morning in the center of the city, also wounded three civilians, said Kunduz province police chief Abdul Rahman Sayedkhaili.

The suicide attack is the second in less than a week in Kunduz -- a major agricultural and marketing center that controls one of the main highways into neighboring Tajikistan. On Dec. 19, insurgents stormed an army recruitment center in the city, killing four Afghan army soldiers and five police in a daylong gunbattle.

NATO has poured troops and pressed hard against the Taliban and other insurgents in the movement's southern strongholds, where coalition officials say NATO troops have made progress. But violence has increased elsewhere in the country, with bombings and targeted assassinations that aim to discourage Afghans from cooperating with the federal government in Kabul.

In the latest such attack, gunmen shot dead the head of the local council in the Shindand district in the western province of Herat in his car, said Noor Khan Nikzad, the spokesman for the Herat provincial police. The man's son who was in the car with him was also killed.

Separately, a roadside bomb struck a tractor pulling a cart loaded with passengers on Wednesday, killing a child and wounding nine people in the Garm Ser district of Helmand province, said Daoud Ahmadi, spokesman for the provincial governor.

The civilian deaths are particularly troubling for the Afghan government and its NATO allies.

A clash between NATO forces and insurgents earlier this week left five civilians dead in Helmand, prompting criticism from the provincial government.

While NATO says it is careful to avoid such casualties, a U.N. report this month said that Afghan civilian casualties surged by 20 percent in the first 10 months of 2010, compared with the same period a year earlier.

The U.N. report also found that civilian casualties attributed to NATO and pro-government forces dropped by 18 percent compared to the first 10 months of 2009 -- findings which the Taliban quickly denied Wednesday as biased and exaggerated.

Civilians have been bearing the brunt of the conflict in Afghanistan, and hundreds of thousands have fled the fighting. The Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations said Thursday that urgent help was needed, particularly in the form of food and fuel, to avoid "a big human(itarian) disaster" as the Afghan winter sets in.

The aid currently being provided by national and international organizations for more than 84,000 families is "not enough at all," the ministry said in a statement. It added that the minister, Jamhir Anwari, was "seriously concern(ed) about the critical condition" of those displaced by the conflict.

Separately, NATO said Thursday that it a Taliban leader involved in the Dec. 19 attack on an Afghan army bus in Kabul was killed in an airstrike in central Ghazni province a day earlier. NATO identified the Taliban leader as Abdul Hai, and said two other insurgents were also killed in the strike that targeted a bombmaking cell.

NATO also said it detained on Wednesday a Haqqani network leader who operated out of the Sabari district in Khost province in the east. It was the second recent detention of a Haqqani leader, reflecting NATO's efforts to curtail a militant network that operates mainly in eastern Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

The latest announcement raises to 25 the number of Haqqani leaders, facilitators and sub-leaders detained since Dec. 1, NATO said.

[Associated Press; By AMIR SHAH]

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