KABUL: A Nato airstrike in central Afghanistan killed three Afghan police officers who were mistaken for insurgents, the coalition said Monday, in an operation that could cause new friction between the international force and a government struggling to find stability.
Separately, in the south, a suicide car bomber struck a border police convoy Monday, killing at least two officers and a civilian, a provincial official said.
The attack took place in Spin Boldak, a town near the Pakistani border where a Taliban-claimed suicide bombing days earlier killed 17 people, including the deputy head of the local border forces, and wounded 23.
The erroneous Nato strike was at least the fourth incident in roughly a month in which coalition troops mistakenly killed civilians or friendly forces, threatening to further sour Afghan attitudes toward the foreign forces.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly complained about civilian deaths in Nato operations as the coalition tries to stamp out the persistent Taliban insurgency.
The strike came Sunday when US Special Forces and local police had teamed up to hunt down Taliban fighters who had just carried out an attack in central Daykundi province, said the province’s deputy governor, Amanullah Gharji.
The Afghan police killed in the strike were apparently mistaken for the insurgents, he said, adding the strike may have been launched on the basis of a mistranslation by an interpreter with coalition forces.
Gharji said that the victims’ families were initially outraged, asking why coordination had been so poor.
”They said that they gave their men to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the coalition forces and that they are against the insurgency,” he said, adding that they wanted to know why the miscommunication occurred.
He said that the governor sent a representative to the area to explain the situation, and the representative was able to defuse the tension.
The families and residents in the area ”just want us to follow up” on the incident, he said.
Nato said a team on the ground called in air support after seeing ”nine armed individuals setting up what appeared to be an ambush position.” The men later turned out to be Afghan police, it said.
The coalition, confirming three Afghan policemen killed and three more wounded, said it was investigating what was an apparent case of friendly fire.
