OneWorld.net (U.S.)

WASHINGTON, Oct 27 (OneWorld) - NATO military operations in Afghanistan have come under renewed humanitarian scrutiny following new revelations that civilians have been killed.

Dozens of civilians were killed in NATO air strikes in the southern province of Kandahar Tuesday, Afghan officials and villagers told reporters in the region and in Kabul Thursday.

NATO spokesmen told reporters a preliminary review found that 12 civilians had died in Tuesday's bombardment and that it remained unclear whether Taliban or NATO fire had killed the civilians. International news agencies said the Afghan Interior Ministry and local officials estimated 40-85 civilians were killed in three villages.

If the locals' estimate is confirmed, then it would represent the largest loss of civilian lives in a single military operation since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan denounced the killings.

''The United Nations has always made clear that the safety and welfare of civilians must always come first and any civilian casualties are unacceptable, without exception,'' it said in a statement.

It was a smaller loss of life that on Wednesday moved a U.S.-based humanitarian group to urge NATO to set its sights with greater care.

The Washington-based Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) called on the multinational force to conduct an official review of procedures to prevent and assess harm to civilians during military operations. This, after western news reports said a young girl was killed and two other children had been injured Monday night when a NATO mortar test fell short of its target and hit their home in the eastern province of Kunar.

CIVIC further urged NATO to recognize and provide monetary compensation to the families involved in the botched exercise and to make public the results of its review.

''There is no good reason to test mortars within firing range of children,'' said Sarah Holewinski, executive director of CIVIC.

''If the goal of rounding up the Taliban is to build a safe Afghanistan for its people, then ISAF has an obligation to look into how its operations might affect civilians,'' she added, referring to NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

Resentment over civilian deaths has been building in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and largely autonomous tribal territories straddling the two countries' shared, rugged border. Media reports have chronicled a number of bomb and missile hits in villages there although most of these have been attributed to U.S. forces pursuing a stated mission to ferret out Osama bin Laden.

Holewinski said CIVIC's appeal was aimed at minimizing losses of civilian life and property--a legal obligation under international humanitarian law--and winning some justice for local victims. Even NATO could benefit, she added.

''ISAF should investigate this incident in a thorough and fully transparent way. And they should make sure the Afghan people see them do it. That's the only way to build trust,'' said Holewinski, whose organization was founded in 2003 by Marla Ruzicka, a humanitarian campaigner who was killed in a suicide bombing in Baghdad two years later, when she was 28 years old.

NATO officials long have said they go to great lengths to avoid killing civilians and said so again in the wake of the killings in Kandahar Tuesday, as locals celebrated the Eid-ul-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.

''With insurgents who regard the population as a form of human shield for themselves it obviously makes life very difficult for us, but it does not stop us from making every effort to ensure that we minimize any problems,'' the Associated Press quoted NATO spokesman Mark Laity as saying Thursday.

NATO officials told reporters the Afghan defense ministry would probe Tuesday's killings in Kandahar but provincial officials said local villagers had grown weary of investigations because at best, these have yielded only verbal apologies.

Official and media tallies suggest this has been Afghanistan's bloodiest year since the U.S.-led invasion routed the Taliban government.

More than 3,000 people have been killed. Most are said to have been militants but the death toll includes many civilians and more than 150 foreign soldiers.

NATO's claims of success in battle notwithstanding, the Taliban and other groups deemed hostile by the government of President Hamid Karzai and its western sponsors are widely acknowledged to have regrouped. They have been aided by a resurgent illegal trade in narcotics, UN analysts and senior NATO officers have said, and by popular frustration over the slow pace of reconstruction and economic recovery--and concern about security among civilians.

General David Richards, the British officer who commands NATO forces in Afghanistan, said in an interview with the Associated Press earlier this month that if life does not improve over the winter, most Afghans could switch sides.

''They will say, 'we do not want the Taliban but then we would rather have that austere and unpleasant life that might involve than another five years of fighting','' Richards said.

NATO's 37-nation Afghanistan force includes some 31,000 troops assigned to ISAF and 8,000 U.S. troops assigned to the Pentagon's Operation Enduring Freedom. The largest ISAF troop contributors as of October 5, according to NATO, included the United States (11,250), UK (5,200), Germany (2,750), Netherlands (2,100), Canada and Italy (1,800 each), and France (1,000).