Afghan wedding party reported hit by US airstrike

The US military said today it was investigating reports that a bombing strike it carried out on a remote Afghan village killed dozens of members of a wedding party, including more than 20 children. Details of the attack in the Shah Wali Kot district in Kandahar province remain sketchy. However, Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, used an address today congratulating Barack Obama on his US election victory to demand an end to such deaths. "We cannot win the fight against terrorism with air strikes," Karzai said. "This is my first demand of the new president of the United States, to put an end to civilian casualties." A US military spokesman in Afghanistan said the reports were still being looked into, adding: "If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences." One man, Abdul Jalil, told the Associated Press that said he was hosting a wedding party for his niece on Monday when the village, Rosi Khan, was targeted by a US air strike. Taliban forces had been battling American forces and took shelter nearby, he added. At least 40 people were killed, he said, including 23 children and 10 women. Twenty-eight others were reported wounded. Although Karzai is a staunch US ally, increasing anger over civilian deaths is threatening to destabilize relations between his country and Washington. The reported attack on the village comes three months after the Afghan government said that a US operation had killed around 90 civilians in the west of the country. A US report said 33 civilians died. Another villager, Mohammad Zahir, said he had counted 36 bodies following the latest US air strike. Another, Mohammad Nabi Khan, said he saw about 50. "There's a lot of casualties," he said at Kandahar's main hospital. "Most of them were women and children. Many are still buried under the rubble of homes." It was impossible to get independent confirmation of the casualty numbers. Rosi Khan is a remote village, about two hours by road from Kandahar city. One of Karzai's brothers, Wali Karzai, the head of Kandahar's provincial council, said he knew about the raid but did not know the number of dead. "We are aware that civilians have died in air strikes conducted by foreign forces in Shah Wali Kot," he told the AFP news agency. "But at this time we don't know how many." Reporters working for AFP and Reuters said they saw women and children being treated in Kandahar's hospital for shrapnel wounds and burns. An estimated 4,000 people, about a third of them civilians, have died this year during fighting involving the Taliban. The great majority of the civilians who died were killed in Taliban attacks, especially suicide and roadside bombs.