Two foreign soldiers died Tuesday fighting insurgents in Afghanistan, the Nato alliance said, as Afghan authorities said international forces had killed eight civilians in a recent operation. Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was aware of the charges by some Afghan officials that its soldiers had killed civilians during a raid against Islamist rebels in the northern province of Baghlan.
Tala Wa Barfak is a remote district in Baghlan, where Taliban insurgents have established a significant presence in recent months. The district chief said that about a dozen other people, "all of them civilians," were injured in the raids, which he said had lasted for "hours".
An ISAF spokesman said the claims were being investigated, adding: "However, current operational reporting does not support any civilian casualties." Civilian casualties caused by foreign forces have fallen this year, with Nato troops responsible for about 22 percent of more than 1,200 non-combatant deaths in the first half of 2010, a recent UN report said. The latest deaths bring to 458 the number of international soldiers killed in the Afghan war so far this year, compared with 520 for the whole last year.
Thirteen international soldiers have been killed since Saturday, seven of them Americans, according to an AFP tally based on that kept by the icasualties.org website. The force said it had killed 35 rebels during operations east of Kabul launched to secure troubled regions ahead of Afghanistan's September parliamentary elections.