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KABUL - Air strikes in the British-controlled Helmand province of Afghanistan may have killed civilians, coalition troops said yesterday, as local people claimed that between 50 and 80 people, many of them women and children, had died.
It was the latest of a series of attacks causing significant civilian casualties. The bombardment, in the Gereshk district, followed an attempted ambush by the Taleban on a joint United States-Afghan military convoy.
According to Mohammad Hussein, the provincial police chief, the militants fled into a nearby village for cover. Planes then targeted the village of Hyderabad. Mohammad Khan, a resident of the village, said seven members of his family, including his brother and five of his brother's children, were killed.
"I brought three of my wounded relatives to Gereshk hospital for treatment," he told AP by phone. The villagers were yesterday burying a "lot of dead bodies".
In Afghanistan, the civilian deaths caused by US and Nato-led troops have infuriated local people and prompted President Hamid Karzai to publicly condemn foreign forces for careless "use of extreme force" and for viewing Afghan lives as "cheap".
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