AFGHANISTAN:At least seven children were killed in a US-led coalition air strike on a religious school in Afghanistan, the coalition said yesterday, amid rising anger over civilian deaths from foreign military operations.
A US military spokesman said some children who survived Sunday's raid said insurgents had forced pupils to stay inside the madrasa or school.
"We had surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications there were children inside the building," said Maj Chris Belcher, a coalition spokesman, in a statement.
Meanwhile, up to 60 civilians have been killed, mostly in Nato-led operations against the Taliban, in the past three days in Afghanistan's southern province of Uruzgan, a senior provincial official said yesterday.
Some 50 Taliban and Afghan forces were also killed in the battles in Chora district of the province, the head of the provincial council, Mawlavi Hamdullah, said.
In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Snow said: "Obviously, any time innocents are killed, it is something that is a tragedy, and certainly we grieve for those who are lost. We also understand that . . . the Taliban and other terrorists try to transform innocents into human shields."
The air strike on the school occurred on the same day a suspected suicide bomber killed more than 20 people in an attack on a police bus in the heart of Kabul.
That attack indicated "the terrorists are certainly willing to go in and take innocent human lives", Mr Snow said. "It means that the terrorists are still active and we have to continue to fight them on all fronts."
Other violence around the country made Sunday one of the bloodiest days since the Taliban were driven from power in 2001.
The US-led Afghan forces killed several dozen insurgents in a "prolonged battle" in the southern province of Helmand that day, the US military said yesterday.
The air strike on the madrasa occurred in the southeastern province of Paktika, near the Pakistan border. The coalition said it had been part of an operation aimed at a compound containing a mosque and a madrasa thought to have been used as a safe house by al-Qaeda fighters.
Violence has surged in Afghanistan in recent months, after the winter lull, with foreign forces attacking Taliban strongholds in the south and east, and Taliban guerrillas hitting back with suicide bombings. - (Reuters)