At least 22 people, most of them women and children, were killed Sunday when US-led coalition air strikes hit a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan, said an Afghan district governor. The strike, which the US military insisted killed militants, prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to order an inquiry. “I confirm that 22 people, three of them men and 19 of them women and children, were killed,” said Hamisha Gul, governor of Deh Bala district in the eastern province of Nangarhar. Gul said his information came from police and other officials he had dispatched to the area near the Pakistan border to investigate after reports of civilian casualties in the incident. The US-led coalition rejected the allegations. “It was not a wedding party, there were no women or children present. We have no reports of civilian casualties,” coalition media officer Captain Christian Patterson said. However, the pictures from the scene prove him wrong. Karzai ordered the Defense and Interior Ministries and a body that oversees local government to investigate, a statement from the presidential palace said Sunday. “President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly emphasized the (need for) coordination of military operations and has been deeply saddened since learning about this incident,” the statement said. It was the second time in three days the coalition was accused of inflicting heavy civilian casualties in air strikes. Afghan officials have said strikes Friday in northeast Nuristan province, also on the border with Pakistan, killed more than a dozen civilians. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in international military action against insurgents, most of them in air strikes on remote areas even though the forces employ several measures to confirm the identities of their targets. The United Nations said last month that nearly 700 Afghan civilians had lost their lives in insurgency-linked violence this year, nearly two-thirds in militant attacks and about 255 in military operations.
