Witnesses: Taliban dead may be civilians

NATO's claims to have killed 11 Taliban who were preparing an ambush in Afghanistan have been disputed by local people who have said that the dead were civilian grape-pickers. The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Afghanistan said its troops spotted 15 Taliban near a main road in Kandahar late on Aug. 22. After realizing they had been detected, the men then moved to a nearby compound which NATO aircraft then bombed, said Major Scott Lundy, a NATO spokesman. Lundy said: "11 Taliban were killed in the air strike, while two insurgents were later seen leaving the compound." But civilians in the Zhari area to the west of Kandahar said the dead were farmers who had been working in their grape fields in the cool of the evening. "Those people who died in the bombing were civilians," said Ahmad Shapour, a resident of the area. Lundy also said that a teenager had been shot dead and another wounded by NATO soldiers after the pair, who were riding a motorbike, had ignored soldiers' orders to stop near the scene of the suicide car-bomb attack. On Aug. 23, three other civilians were killed in two blasts on a road near Kandahar air base, the main base for foreign troops in southern Afghanistan, a provincial official said. A US air strike also killed 10 Afghan police on Aug. 17.