Taliban continue using human shields

AP/Houston Chronicle:

Taliban militants attacked police posts in southern Afghanistan, triggering NATO airstrikes that left 25 civilians dead, including three infants and the local mullah, a senior police officer said today.

NATO said its overnight bombardment killed most of a group of 30 insurgents and blamed them for the deaths of any innocents, saying they had launched "irresponsible" attacks from civilian homes.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticized the mounting civilian toll from NATO and U.S.-led military operations as "difficult for us to accept or understand."

The police posts came under fire late Thursday in Gereshk district of Helmand province, Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, provincial police chief, told The Associated Press.

NATO responded by calling in airstrikes, which killed 20 suspected militants, but also 25 civilians, including nine women, three babies and the mullah at the local mosque, Andiwal said.

Taliban used at least two civilian compounds for cover during the clashes, which lasted into early Friday, Andiwal said.

"NATO was targeting the areas where the fire was coming from ... and two compounds were completely destroyed, and the families living in those compounds were killed," he said.

Villagers loaded the victims' bodies onto tractor trailers to take them to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, to prove they were innocent victims, but police stopped them, Andiwal said.

NATO said the aircraft struck after insurgents attacked troops from its International Security Assistance Force nine miles northeast of Gereshk town.

"A compound was assessed to have been occupied by up to 30 insurgent fighters, most of whom were killed in the engagement," an alliance statement said.

Lt. Col. Mike Smith, a NATO spokesman, expressed concern about the reports of civilian deaths, but claimed that as insurgents had chosen the time and location for the attack, "the risk to civilians was probably deliberate."

"It is this irresponsible action that may have led to casualties," he said.

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It was also a war crime on the part of the Taliban. The AP is remiss as usual in pointing out enemy war crimes. The use of human shields is cowardly and illegal under the law of wars. If our side was doing it the AP would be quick to criticize, but it ignores enemy violations of these rules.

It does report that civilians are angered at our forces fore responding to these attacks, but the story does not note the mounting anger against the Taliban for putting these people in harms way. There have been reports of villagers actually killing the Taliban who try to take refuge that will put civilians at risk.

The Karzai government has not been aggressive as it should be in pointing out the Taliban's responsibility for putting civilians at risk.