Topic: U.S. Military: Taliban Skews News Of Deaths

USA Today
July 7, 2008
Pg. 6

U.S. commanders said Sunday that the Taliban is making up stories of accidental killings of civilians in Afghanistan to discredit the NATO effort to defeat Islamist militants.
Army Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, told the Associated Press that two allegations of civilian deaths in battle were being investigated, but he and other U.S. officials said Taliban militants often hide among civilians and press them to make false claims.
"Whenever we do an airstrike, the first thing they're going to cry is 'Airstrike killed civilians' when the missile actually struck militant extremists we were targeting," said a U.S. spokesman, 1st Lt. Nathan Perry. "We don't believe we've harmed anyone except for the combatants."
The chief government official in the Deh Bala district of Nangarhar province, Haji Amishah Gul, said Sunday that villagers in a remote area he could not reach called his office to say 27 people in a wedding party were killed in a bombing. The U.S. military said its missiles killed a column of militants.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation into allegations that missiles from U.S. helicopters struck civilians Friday. The Afghan Defense Ministry said Sunday that the attackkilled or wounded 20 militants, not civilians. Perry said military reports thus far show the airstrike hit two vehicles carrying militants.