NATO airstrike kills at least five civilians

At least five civilians, including two young girls, were killed in an air strike by NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, police and hospital officials said.

"We have received five bodies of civilians in our provincial public hospital," Khost provincial health director Amirbadshah Rahmatzai Mangal told AFP.

"The dead include two female children of seven and eight years of age. A 14-year-old boy was wounded."

Khost provincial police chief general Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai said six civilians were killed by the bombing, which targeted Taliban militants in the mountainous area on the Pakistan border.

"The coalition forces bombed Taliban positions in Musa Khel district of Khost province today, which resulted in the killing of 38 Taliban and six civilians," he said.

The Afghan interior ministry and NATO could not confirm the incident, but said they were investigating.

Civilian casualties are an incendiary issue in Afghanistan and are often used by the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban alike for political ends, even though most are caused by the insurgents.

Civilian deaths caused by Western troops fell 28 percent last year compared to the year before, according to a UN study which attributed the drop to measures taken specifically to protect civilians.

Commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, has made minimising civilian casualties a central tenet of his counter-insurgency strategy and has ordered reduced air strikes to help achieve the objective.

The vast majority of the 2,142 civilians killed in the Afghan war in 2009 died in Taliban attacks, the UN's Mission for Afghanistan said, but it was the deadliest year for ordinary Afghans since the 2001 US-led invasion.