Coalition attack kills 76 Afghans killed in coalition attack: govt

KABUL (AFP) - A US-led coalition military operation in western Afghanistan on Friday killed 76 civilians, including 50 children and 19 women, the Afghan Interior Ministry said.

The coalition confirmed it carried out an operation that included airstrikes in the western province of Herat but said 30 Taliban rebels were killed only and said it knew of no civilian deaths.

The Afghan Defence Ministry meanwhile gave yet another toll - five civilians and 25 rebels dead.

It was impossible to independently verify what happened in volatile Shindand district, but the conflicting reports highlight the difficulty in establishing facts in the mounting clashes between troops and rebels.

“Seventy-six people, all civilians and most of them women and children, were martyred during the operation by coalition forces in Shindand district of Herat province,” the ministry said in a statement.

The dead were “19 women, seven men and the rest children all under 15 years of age,” it said.