Afghan police: 3 die in Lashkar Gah blast amid continuing offense against Taliban

Afghan police: 3 die in Lashkar Gah blast

KABUL — Afghan police say three civilians have died and at least 11 others were wounded in an explosion in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province where thousands of NATO and Afghan forces are in their 11th day of a major offensive against the Taliban.

Provincial police chief Gen. Asadullah Sherzad says explosives in a parked motorbike were detonated Tuesday in front of the traffic department.

He says police are trying to figure out the target of the boming.

A doctor at Lashkar Gah hospital says 14 other people sustained injuries, including one woman and three children.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

KABUL (AP) — The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan took his apology for a weekend airstrike that killed civilians directly to the Afghan people Tuesday, with a video in which he pledged to work to regain their trust.

In the video, translated into the Afghan languages of Dari and Pashto on a NATO Web site, a stern Gen. Stanley McChrystal apologizes for the strike in central Uruzgan province that Afghan officials say killed at least 21 people.

Sunday’s attack by NATO jets on a convoy of cars was the deadliest attack on civilians in six months and prompted a sharp rebuke from the Afghan government. It comes as NATO is struggling to win public backing for a major military offensive against the Taliban in the south with a strategy that involves taking all precautions possible to protect civilians.

The civilian deaths occurred as 15,000 NATO, U.S. and Afghan soldiers were in their 10th day of fighting insurgents in the southern town of Marjah in Helmand province. The mission is to rout the Taliban, set up a local government and rush in aid to win public support.

The alliance said its planes fired on what was thought to be a group of insurgents in Uruzgan province on their way to attack NATO and Afghan forces. Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said the airstrike hit three minibuses, which were traveling on a major road near Uruzgan’s border with Day Kundi province.

“I pledge to strengthen our efforts to regain your trust to build a brighter future for all Afghans,” McChrystal said in the video.

“I have instituted a thorough investigation to prevent this from happening again,” he added. McChrystal apologized directly to President Hamid Karzai on Sunday shortly after the incident and the video is another sign of the military coalition’s intense public relations campaign.

Although the airstrike was not related to the Marjah offensive, civilian casualties undermine NATO’s goal of turning back the Taliban and winning the confidence of the Afghan people — one of the main objectives of the southern operation.

On Monday, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon that the efforts against the Taliban were “messy” and “incredibly wasteful,” as was war in general. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the cost.”

The incident in Uruzgan “reminds us of just how fragile and how tragic any move we can make, any move we make can ultimately be,” he said.

“These are split-second decisions that commanders in combat on the ground have to make,” he added.

Mullen said the troops in Marjah are making “steady, if perhaps a bit slower than anticipated, progress.” He cited the prevalence of planted bombs and the care taken to avoid civilian casualties for the slow pace.

Karzai has repeatedly called on NATO to do more to protect civilians during stepped-up military operations, and the Afghan Cabinet strongly condemned the airstrike.

In recent months, NATO has limited airstrikes and tightened rules of engagement on the battlefield to try to protect the Afghan people and win their loyalty from the Taliban.

It was the second time in nine days that NATO has apologized for killing civilians. On Feb. 14, two U.S. rockets slammed into a home outside Marjah, killing 12 people, including six children. According to NATO, at least 16 civilians have been killed so far during the offensive; human rights groups say the figure is at least 19.

Bashary said investigators had recovered 21 bodies from the Uruzgan airstrike and that two other people were missing.

The Afghan Cabinet reported a higher death toll, saying 27 civilians were killed, including four women and a child, and 12 other people were injured. The ministers urged NATO to “closely coordinate and exercise maximum care before conducting any military operation” to avoid further civilian casualties.

The toll was the highest involving civilians since last September, when U.S. pilots bombed two hijacked fuel tankers in a German-ordered airstrike near the northern town of Kunduz. German officials, citing a classified NATO report, say up to 142 people are believed to have died or been injured. Afghan leaders estimated that 30 to 40 civilians were killed.

The controversy about the Uruzgan strike came as a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a community meeting Monday in eastern Afghanistan, killing 15 civilians including a prominent tribal leader widely criticized for failing to prevent Osama bin Laden’s escape at Tora Bora after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Monday’s suicide bombing occurred outside Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. Police Gen. Mohammad Ayub Salangi said a militant attacked tribal elders and government workers who were meeting with a few hundred Afghan refugees to discuss the distribution of land.

Among those killed was Mohammad Zaman Ghamsharik, better known as Haji Zaman, one of the two principal Afghan warlords who went after bin Laden after the Taliban fled Kabul in 2001.

A Senate Foreign Relations Committee report released in November 2009 said U.S. special operations forces relied on Zaman, described as a “wealthy drug smuggler” whom the U.S. had coaxed back from France, and fellow warlord Hazrat Ali.

They fielded a combined force of 2,000 men, but distrusted each other and appeared to distrust their American allies, the report said.

On Dec. 11, 2001, Zaman told the senior U.S. military officer at Tora Bora that al-Qaida fighters wanted to surrender, but needed a cease-fire to allow them to get down from the mountains, the report said. That turned out to be a ruse, and bin Laden and hundreds of his followers escaped.

Associated Press Writers Rahim Faiez and Tini Tran in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.