NATO airstrike is said to have killed Afghan civilians

A NATO helicopter airstrike on Sunday against what international troops believed to be a group of insurgents ended up killing as many as 27 civilians in the worst such case since at least September, Afghan officials said Monday. "The repeated killing of civilians by NATO forces is unjustifiable," President Hamid Karzai's cabinet said in a statement. "We strongly condemn it." The attack was carried out by United States Special Forces helicopters that were patrolling the area hunting for insurgents who had escaped the NATO offensive in the Marja area, about 150 miles away, according to Gen. Abdul Hameed, an Afghan National Army commander in Dehrawood, which is part of Oruzgan Province. General Hameed, interviewed by telephone, said there had been no request from any ground forces to carry out an attack. The airstrike took place in an area under Dutch military control, and if Dutch forces were involved in the incident it could have serious political repercussions in the Netherlands, where the government collapsed Saturday over an effort to extend the stay of 2,000 Dutch troops in Afghanistan. But a Dutch defense ministry spokesman in The Hague said Dutch forces were not involved in calling the airstrike. The spokesman, who spoke in return for customary anonymity, did not say who had called for air support. NATO officials did not immediately identify the nationality of the forces involved in the incident.