US soldier kills 16 civilians in Kandahar

An American soldier opened fire on villagers near his base in southern Afghanistan Sunday and killed 16 civilians, according to President Hamid Karzai who called it an “assassination” and furiously demanded an explanation from Washington. Nine children and three women were among the dead.

However, witnesses told Reuters they saw a group of US soldiers going on a rampage.
The killing spree deepened a crisis between US forces and their Afghan hosts over Americans burning the Quran on a base in Afghanistan last month. The burning sparked weeks of violent protests and attacks that left some 30 dead. Six US service members have been killed by their Afghan colleagues since the Quran burnings came to light, but the violence had just started to calm down.

“This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven,” Karzai said in a statement. He said he has repeatedly demanded the US stop killing Afghan civilians. The violence over the Quran burnings has spurred calls in the US for a faster exit strategy from the 10-year-old Afghan war.
President Barack Obama even said recently that "now is the time for us to transition." But he also said he had no plan to change the current timetable that has Afghans taking control of security countrywide by the end of 2014.

The top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen John Allen, visited troops at a base that was attacked in the wake of the Quran burnings last month and urged them not to give in to the urge for revenge.

The tensions between the two countries had appeared to be easing as recently as Friday, when the US and Afghan governments signed a memorandum of understanding about the transfer of Afghan detainees to Afghan control — a key step toward an eventual strategic partnership to govern US forces in the country.

But Sunday’s shooting could push that agreement further away.

“This is a fatal hammer blow on the US military mission in Afghanistan. Whatever sliver of trust and credibility we might have had following the burnings of the Quran is now gone,” said David Cortright, the director of policy studies at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and an advocate for a quick withdrawal from Afghanistan.

One villager said 11 of those killed were members of his family, some of them women and children. Five people were wounded in the pre-dawn attack in Kandahar province, including a 15-year-old boy named Rafiullah who was shot in the leg and spoke to Karzai over the telephone. He described how the American soldier entered his house in the middle of the night, woke up his family and began shooting them, according to Karzai’s statement.

Nato officials apologised for the shootings but did not confirm that anyone was killed, referring instead to reports of deaths. “This deeply appalling incident in no way represents the values of ISAF and coalition troops or the abiding respect we feel for the Afghan people,” Allen said in a statement.

He pledged a “rapid and thorough investigation”.  Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said Obama was briefed on the shooting. “We are deeply concerned by the initial reports... and are monitoring the situation closely,” she said.

The attack took place in two villages in the Panjwai district.  The villages — Balandi and Alkozai — are about 500 metres from a US base. The shooting started around 3 am, said Asadullah Khalid, the government representative for southern Afghanistan and a member of the delegation that went to investigate the incident.