KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The civilian death roll continues to rise in Afghanistan, with a report Thursday that coalition bombs killed another seven civilians following a clash between U.S. forces and the Taliban.
It was the second time this week that an errant air strike has cost the lives of what the military calls "non-combatants."
It occurred just hours after President Hamid Karzai urged president-elect Barack Obama to ensure that Afghan civilians are not killed in operations by U.S. forces.
Monday night, nearly 40 women and children died when coalition bombs hit a wedding party in the Shah Wali Kot district in Kandahar province.
The latest incident, on Wednesday night, was in the Ghormach district of Badghis province in the northwest, where a three-hour clash between insurgents and Afghan and U.S. troops preceded an air strike that hit the house of a provincial council member.
"A convoy came under ambush and two units responded to their aid," confirmed Col. Greg Julian, the public affairs officer for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. "They called for close air support and then, earlier today, we learned that there might be some civilian casualties as a result."
"It was not just from the air -- they were responding with ground fire directly at individuals and so forth but we're really just at the initial stage of finding out exactly what happened," Julian said.
The latest blows come at a time when coalition relations with many Afghans are at an all-time low, despite a NATO rallying cry "to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people."
Wali Khan, 60, the owner of a house in Shah Wali Kot that was destroyed in Monday's air strike, lost six members of his family.
"I am destroyed," he said as he sat crying in the rubble in front of his former home.
Afghans who had high hopes with the fall of the Taliban are growing increasingly despondent over the rise in civilian deaths and a drop in security.
A report from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in September suggested there had been a 21 per cent increase in civilian deaths at the hands of pro-government forces. That number is even higher if you factor in the two recent incidents.
Although Canadian troops have not been involved in incidents involving large numbers of civilian casualties, many Afghans do not differentiate between foreign forces and consider all equally guilty.
The U.S. is in the process of investigating both recent incidents. In the case of the bombs that hit the wedding party in Kandahar province, the American military and the government of Afghanistan are conducting a joint investigation.
Julian said part of the investigation in Shah Wali Kot was the possibility that Taliban fighters moved to rooftops in the village and drew down fire from the U.S. aircraft.
"Any time that insurgents are embedding themselves within urban areas, that's the worst possible thing that could happen as we try to protect these Afghans," said Julian.
"Civilian casualties are the unintended victims of this sort of conflict and we're trying everything we can think of to minimize" them, he added.
"One of the things we strive for is to work on these investigations together to come to a common understanding and not allow insurgents to take advantage of any opportunity to try and draw a wedge between the Afghan government and the international forces."
Thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed in the U.S.-led war on terror in Afghanistan since the American invasion in 2001.
Three months ago, the Afghan government and a preliminary UN investigation found that a U.S. operation killed some 90 civilians in western Afghanistan.
