The New York Times reports today that a team of investigators from the American-led forces here headed to a volatile corner of northeast Afghanistan on Tuesday after local officials reported that a nighttime raid by NATO commandos there had left 8 civilians dead and 12 wounded.
Details were sketchy, but the governor of Tala Wa Barfak, a district in Baghlan Province, said the Afghans had been killed in the village of Naik early Sunday by what appeared to have been a raid carried out by special forces, according to the Times report.
Among the dead were two women and a child, he said. Though insurgents cause an overwhelming majority of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, the issue is a delicate one between NATO and the Afghan government. In recent months, NATO commanders have sharply curtailed airstrikes and night raids to reduce the number of civilian deaths, according to the New York Times story.
But special forces commandos are sent on missions at a high tempo, in a campaign to kill midranking Taliban leaders. Those commandos often carry out their raids at night, exploiting the elements of darkness and surprise, The New York Times reports. Afghanistan is a tribal society, and the results of botched raids are often difficult to overcome. Mahmood Haqmal, a spokesman for the governor of Baghlan Province, to the newspaper: 'If coalition forces kill one civilian, 20 other family members will pick up weapons and stand against them.'
