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At least 14 civilians including women and children were killed in an Afghan-U.S. aerial operation in northern Kunduz province, officials said Friday. Afghan officials said the incident was still being investigated and it was unclear whether the casualties had been caused by Afghan or U.S. aircraft, both of which flew missions in support of the operation. Nematullah Temori, a spokesman for the Kunduz governor, said women and children were among 14 people killed in the raid in Chardara, a district outside Kunduz city that has long been fought over between Taliban and government security forces. As air strikes have increased, the U.N. report said civilian casualties from aerial attacks rose by 52 percent in the first half of the year to 353 killed and wounded and it urged forces to improve civilian protection in air operations. Mohammad Radmanish, a spokesman for the ministry of defence, confirmed that a number of civilians had been killed but said the incident was still being investigated. “For the moment, it is difficult to say how many civilians were killed or wounded and who carried out the air strike.”

A statement from the U.S. military command in Kabul said U.S. forces had conducted strikes in the area in support of Afghan-led ground operations, but that its on-the-ground assessment of those strikes gave no indication U.S. forces had caused civilian casualties. According to the United Nations, at least 1,692 civilians were killed in the conflict during the first half of the year, the highest total for the first half of a year that the world body has recorded since it adopted its method of tallying casualties in 2009. One of the worst incidents was in Kunduz in April, when an Afghan air strike on an outdoor religious gathering in Dashte Archi killed or wounded 107 people, mostly children, a previous UNAMA report found.
Fourteen civilians are killed in an airstrike near Kunduz.