Mayor says U.S.-Afghan raid killed his staff

United States-led coalition and Afghan troops killed five suspected militants during a raid in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, the coalition said in a statement. The local mayor offered a different version of the events, saying that his house had been targeted and that the dead included his cook and driver. Civilian deaths in coalition raids are an increasingly sensitive issue in Afghanistan's fight against the Taliban and other militants. The United States and NATO officials have said that militants regularly operate out of homes and portray dead fighters as civilians in order to stoke public anger. A coalition statement said that five militants had been killed and four others had been detained during the early-morning raid targeting what it called a terrorist network in Kunduz Province, close to the border with Tajikistan. The statement said one militant had been killed in the initial assault on a compound and the rest had died after troops had asked for noncombatants to exit the buildings but instead were ''engaged with small arms fire.'' Abdul Manan, mayor of Imam Sahib district offered a much different account. He said the forces attacked his house and killed two of his guards, a cook, a driver and another man. Mr. Manan said the helicopter-borne forces blew open the compound gates. He said he had been hunkered down inside a room with his wife and children, and there was no contact with the troops during the raid. The coalition statement said ''no women or children were present in the targeted attacks.'' Independent confirmation of what happened was not immediately possible because the incident took place in a remote area. Abdul Rahman Akhtash, the deputy provincial police chief, said about 300 people had gathered in Imam Sahib later Sunday to protest the raid. More than 2,100 civilians died in the Afghan war last year, a 40 percent increase over 2007, the United Nations has reported, with United States, NATO and Afghan forces blamed for the deaths of 829 civilians, or 39 percent of the total. Also Sunday, a roadside bomb exploded in eastern Khost Province, wounding 12 road construction workers traveling in a minibus to their job northeast of Khost city, said Gen. Abdul Qayum Baquizai, the provincial police chief. Militants regularly plant roadside bombs targeting Afghan and foreign troops, but many of the victims have been civilians.