| A survey by NATO’s force in Afghanistan found that fewer than a dozen civilians were killed in foreign air strikes that village elders said had left 45 civilians dead, an officer said Sunday. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) however welcomed an investigation appointed by President Hamid Karzai into the bombing on late Friday in the southern province of Helmand, an ISAF spokesman said. “At this time we believe after our survey of the situation on Saturday when the fighting ceased that there may be less than a dozen civilian dead,” Major John Thomas said. The dead included women and children who were found among the bodies of killed Taliban in trenches, he said. A “significant number of Taliban” were also killed, Thomas said. |