Rights group: 78 Afghans killed; US to investigate

Scores of Afghan civilians who had gathered in a small village for the memorial ceremony of a militia commander were killed when U.S. and Afghan soldiers launched an attack in the middle of the night, officials and villagers said Saturday.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the early Friday operation in western Afghanistan and said most of the dead were civilians. The U.S. coalition, however, said it believed only five civilians were among those killed and said that it would investigate the Afghan claims.

An Afghan human rights group that visited the site of the operation said Saturday that at least 78 people were killed. The Ministry of Interior has said 76 civilians died, including 50 children under the age of 15, though the Ministry of Defense said 25 militants and five civilians were killed.

Meanwhile, a school principal and police official said Afghan soldiers tried to hand out food and clothes Saturday in Azizabad — the village in Herat province where the operation took place. But villagers started throwing stones at the soldiers, who then fired on the villagers and wounded up to eight people.

An Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission researcher visited Azizabad in Herat province and found that 15 houses had been destroyed and others were damaged, said Ahmad Nader Nadery, the group's commissioner.

Nadery said the information was preliminary and the group would publish a final report. He did not provide a breakdown of how many were civilians or militants, and said 20 women were among the dead and that children also were killed.