KABUL, Afghanistan – The top NATO commander in Afghanistan said
Thursday that he is committed to reducing the loss of innocent lives to
an absolute minimum.
The statement marked Gen.
David Petraeus' latest attempt to ease President Hamid Karzai's anger
over civilian casualties. Karzai exploded in rage after a recent air
attack that killed at least nine civilians in Helmand province in the
south.
After that attack, Karzai ordered the
U.S.-led coalition to stop bombing homes because too many civilians
were being killed. It was Karzai's strongest-ever statement against
NATO alliance airstrikes and further complicated a difficult
relationship with the Obama administration as it prepares a troop
drawdown in the increasingly unpopular war.
In
a visit to Khost province in eastern Afghanistan along the Pakistan
border, Petraeus expressed his "absolute commitment to reducing to the
absolute minimum the loss of innocent, civilian lives" during
operations targeting insurgents.
NATO has significantly reduced civilian casualties in recent years, but civilians deaths from insurgent attacks have spiked.
"We
share President Karzai's emotion about this," Petraeus said. "We are
here to protect the people, to safeguard them, not to harm them or
their property."
Petraeus and Karzai are expected to discuss the sensitive issue at a meeting this weekend.
Karzai
regularly and publicly condemns NATO for not doing enough to reduce
civilian casualties. But international military officials say that in
private discussions Afghan officials say NATO should keep up the pace
of night raids and airstrikes because they are effective. Those
officials have always spoken anonymously so as not to contradict the
Afghan government.
Karzai's spokesman said, however, that Karzai intends to stand firm on the issue this time, regardless of the fallout with NATO.
The
coalition said at least nine civilians were killed in Helmand's Nawzad
district. Afghan officials have said 14 were killed, including at least
10 children and two women.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also tried this week to smooth relations.
"The
Afghan people have put up with 30 years of war, and I think President
Karzai is reflecting the pain and suffering that the Afghan people have
had to endure," Gates said during a stop this week on his last trip
through Asia as head of the U.S. Defense Department.
"But
at the same time," Gates said, "I think he also recognizes, and the
Afghan people do, that we are their ally and we are their friend and we
are trying to help them develop the capability to protect themselves so
that the Afghan people can see and end to this kind of conflict."
Separately
on Thursday, NATO said it captured a senior al-Qaida operative and
former Osama bin Laden associate in Balkh province in northern
Afghanistan. NATO did not identify the man, but said he was based in
Pakistan and was a former associate of bin Laden. He was killed in a
U.S. raid in Pakistan on May 2. NATO also said the man captured on
Wednesday may have been with the al-Qaida leader in 2001.
NATO said 35 people associated with al-Qaida and the Taliban have been captured in Balkh since February.
Also
in the north, the German army said one of its soldiers was killed and
five others were wounded in a bomb attack in Baghlan province. A
spokesman for the Bundeswehr Operations Command in Potsdam, Germany,
said the attack on a German tank occurred Thursday morning about 22
miles (35 kilometers) south of the city of Kunduz.
In
the east, a Polish soldier died in combat Thursday in an insurgent
attack that left two others injured in Ghazni province, Poland's
military said.
In the south, insurgents
attacked a road construction crew building a highway in Uruzgan
province, killing two security guards and a police officer, said Milad
Ahmad Mudasir, the governor's spokesman. NATO troops attacked the
insurgents and killed a Taliban shadow governor in the province, as
well as arresting two other Taliban commanders, Mudasir said.
The coalition said a NATO service member was killed in a roadside bomb attack in the south, but disclosed no other details.
In Kandahar, the largest city in the south, a roadside bomb
targeting a police vehicle killed one man, said Kandahar provincial
police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq. Eight other people were wounded — five
men and three children — in the blast, according to Dr. Irfan Azeem, a
doctor at the city hospital. AP
