A US soldier has been charged with the murder of three civilians in Afghanistan and four others have been implicated but not charged in the crimes, a US army spokeswoman said Monday. Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 22, was charged Friday with premeditated murder and assault in three separate incidents that occurred between January to May 2010 in Kandahar province, said Lieutenant Colonel Tamara Parker. 'There are five soldiers who have been implicated in the murders, but only one has been charged,' she told selfnews. The three civilians were murdered 'at or near Forward Operating Base Ramrod,' about 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of Kandahar in the country's fiercely contested south. The army would not say who the victims were or when and how the murders were carried out. Parker said the circumstances surrounding the murders and other specifics would be withheld until the investigation into the role of the other soldiers was concluded. Morlock, who was with the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, was brought back to the unit's base in Fort Lewis, Washington where he was charged. He joined the army in June 2006 and deployed to Afghanistan in June 2009. The other soldiers, all of them enlisted service members, remained in Afghanistan under the jurisdiction of US Forces Afghanistan. The US military has made protecting the civilian population the focus of its counter-insurgency strategy against the Taliban. But high profile cases of civilian deaths in military operations have eroded Afghan support for the NATO presence and strained relations with the government of President Hamid Karzai. 