HEARAT: Afghan police said Wednesday that a US-led air strike killed six women and two children in western Afghanistan, but the US military said up to 15 militants died. The bodies of eight men were found after Monday's strike on the outskirts of the city of Herat, the police chief for western Afghanistan, Ikramuddin Yawar, told. Three of the men appeared to belong to the "armed opposition" but the identities of the other five were unclear, the police officer said. Those five bodies were found near the dead women and children, who were from a nomad tribe and killed close to their tents, he said."We sent a police and army team to investigate the incident. They reported back to me that six women and two children as well as eight men -- three of them in one location and five in another -- were killed," he told. "The women and children no doubt were civilians. Three of the men could be from the armed opposition, but we are not sure about who the other five were," Yawar added.The US military said in a statement that the strike targeted a key insurgent commander called Gholam Yahya Akbari. "Killed in the attack were up to 15 militants suspected of associating with Yahya," it said. The police chief said Yahya was not dead. The military said it had no official reports of civilian casualties. "However, when we receive confirmed reports of civilian deaths, we take those reports very seriously and investigate them along with our Afghan counterparts," said spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Rick Helmer.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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