Afghan leader to return after report of civilian deaths in Logar province and suicide attacks on Nato base in Kandahar
Hamid Karzai is cutting short an official visit to China following reports of civilian deaths in a Nato air strike in south-east Afghanistan and an insurgent bombing in the south, the Afghan presidential palace has said.
Karzai said 18 civilians were killed in a pre-dawn air strike in Logar province on Wednesday. The Nato-led international security assistance force said it was investigating.
"A Nato air strike in which civilian lives are lost and property damaged does not have any justification," Karzai said. "It is not acceptable."
A pair of suicide bombers also struck outside a major Nato base in the southern city of Kandahar on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding 50 in one of the bloodiest attacks in days.
Civilians are regular victims of the fighting that now affects most of Afghanistan, and last year a record number of innocent people were killed, according to UN data.
The Nato attack targeted Taliban fighters who had taken shelter in a house, but among the bodies that angry villagers brought to the provincial capital were at least five women and seven children, according to a photographer from the Associated Press who saw the dead.
Nato forces said they had requested an air strike in Baraki Barak after troops were attacked with guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but listed "multiple insurgents" as the only dead. A spokesman on Wednesday said the Nato-led coalition was looking into allegations of civilian casualties.
It is not clear whether the insurgents sought permission to enter the house, or forced their way in at gunpoint. There were also at least half a dozen militants among those killed, the police and intelligence services said.
Karzai's condemnation of the strike serves as a reminder of the ongoing tension between Afghanistan and its western allies as the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, visits. Panetta told reporters that he is using the trip, his fourth to Afghanistan, to take stock of progress and discuss plans for the troop withdrawal.
Karzai has long criticised Nato for not doing enough to prevent the killings of innocent civilians, which have become a major irritant in relations with his foreign partners.
He warned earlier this month that the deaths could undermine a deal laying the framework for ties with the US after 2014, when most foreign combat forces will have left Afghanistan.
His critics in turn say the Afghan president should be stronger in his condemnation of the Taliban's role in pushing up the country's civilian casualty toll. Insurgents are now responsible for more than three-quarters of these deaths, according to UN figures.