Overnight NATO raid in eastern Afghanistan triggers protests

Angry demonstrations erupted in eastern Afghanistan on Friday as villagers accused Western troops of killing up to 11 civilians in an overnight raid. NATO said that eight people were killed, but that all were insurgents.

The scenario was a familiar one: Coalition and Afghan forces sweep down on a compound in the dead of night in search of Taliban operatives. A firefight breaks out, and the identities of the dead are then furiously contested.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s International Security Assistance Force said that the eight men killed in the confrontation in the Surkhrod district of Nangarhar province included a Taliban subcommander, and that a weapons cache was recovered at the scene.

Villagers, though, described the dead as civilians, including five members of one family and four from another.

Wazirullah, a Surkhrod man who uses only one name, said by telephone that the troops arrived after midnight, and that someone in the compound opened fire, apparently believing they were under attack by thieves or insurgents.

A statement from Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office said 10 “innocent people” had been killed. The discrepancies in the number of people reported dead could not be immediately reconciled.

Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of Western forces in Afghanistan, has sought to limit the use of night raids because confusion in the dark can carry lethal consequences. But such surprise nighttime strikes are regarded as an important tactic for hunting down holed-up insurgent commanders.

The killings triggered a stone-throwing demonstration by villagers who tried to march toward the provincial capital, Jalalabad. The protesters paraded the bodies of some of the dead, burned an American flag and shouted anti-Western slogans.

The Interior Ministry dispatched a police team to investigate the circumstances of the deaths. Officials said they would not comment until their findings were complete.

Civilian casualties are a bitter point of contention between the Afghan government and foreign forces. During Karzai’s visit to Washington this week, President Obama pledged that Western forces would do all they could to safeguard the lives of noncombatants.

Also in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, a provincial governor escaped a suicide attack carried out by an unusual means: The assailant leaped from a roadside wall onto the roof of a vehicle in the governor’s passing convoy, blowing himself up as he jumped.

The governor, Juma Khan Hamdard, of Paktia was unhurt in the blast, but one person, identified as a civilian, was killed and four people were injured, provincial officials said. It was not immediately clear whether the dead and wounded were members of the governor’s entourage.

laura.king@latimes.com