Marine unit under investigation

Marines are under investigation in civilian deaths that followed a March 4 suicide bombing, and their entire unit has been ordered to leave Afghanistan early, officials said Friday.

Army Maj. Gen. Francis H. Kearney III, head of Special Operations Command Central, ordered the unit of about 120 Marines out of Afghanistan and initiated an investigation, said Lt. Col. Lou Leto, spokesman at Kearney’s command headquarters in Tampa, Fla. It is highly unusual for any combat unit to have its mission cut short.

A spokesman for the Marine unit, Maj. Cliff Gilmore, said the troops were in the process of leaving Afghanistan, but he declined to provide details on the timing and new location.

In the March 4 incident in Nangarhar province, an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into a convoy of Marines who U.S. officials said also came under gunfire. As many as 10 Afghans were killed and 34 wounded as the convoy sped away. Injured Afghans said the Americans fired on civilian cars and pedestrians.

U.S. military officials said militants shot at Marines and may have caused some of the civilian casualties.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the incident, which was one of several involving U.S. forces in which civilians were killed and injured.

Leto said the Marines, after being ambushed, responded in a way that created perceptions that “have really damaged the relationship between the local population and this unit.”

Therefore, he said, “the general felt it was best to move them out of that area.”

Gilmore said the Marine company would complete its overseas deployment with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is the larger unit it sailed with from Camp Lejeune, N.C., in January, but it will no longer operate in Afghanistan.

For years the Marines resisted creating special operations units, arguing that would run counter to their philosophy of viewing all Marines as elite fighters and not singling out elements as special. But former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pressed them to establish a separate command -- the Marine Special Operations Command -- to train and equip forces for the multi-service Special Operations Command.

There are about 25,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, mostly conventional combat forces and support units.