On August 22, 2008 it was reported that a US air strike on a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan had resulted in thirty deaths.
AP) U.S.-led troops attacked a compound where Taliban leaders were meeting in western Afghanistan, killing 30 militants, American and Afghan military officials said Friday.
The coalition was striking back against insurgents opposed to the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai who have stepped up attacks on foreign and Afghan troops.
The coalition said its troops called in airstrikes on the compound in the Shindand district of Herat province on Thursday.
Some 30 militants were killed and five others were detained, spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry said. The troops found a haul of weapons and ammunition inside the compound, he said.
Afghan officials issued contradictory statements about what had happened and it was not immediately clear why they offered such differing accounts.
Now we hear the discrepancy is that more than ninety civilians, women and children, died in the air strikes.
President Hamid Karzai sacked two Afghan military commanders working with the US-led coalition after more than 90 civilians, mostly women and children, were reported to have been killed in a botched operation.
He dismissed the two men, including a senior general in western Afghanistan, for “negligence and concealing facts” following the incident in Herat province, which could prove to be one of the deadliest attacks on civilians since 2001.
We are really not accomplishing anything in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is time to step aside.
