Evidence ... a frame from the grainy video that apparently shows a devastating casualty toll from a US airstrike on a village in Afghanistan
THE US military said it planned to reopen an investigation into civilian deaths in a coalition air strike in western Afghanistan last month after new evidence emerged about casualties.
The military had earlier disputed an Afghan Government allegation that more than 90 people, many of them women and children, died in the August 22 raid in western Herat`s Shindand district, a figure backed by the UN.
The US military in its investigation found that 30 to 35 Taliban militants were killed, including a commander, in the US-led coalition air strike.
However videos obtained by news agency The Associated Press show the bodies of at least 10 children and many adults covered in blankets and white shrouds on the floor of a mosque in the village of Azizabad.
The grainy videos, apparently taken by cell phones, show turbaned men lifting blankets to examine the bodies, with graphic images of heads partly blown off,
The sounds of women wailing and men shouting are heard.
The New York Times said on Sunday its reporter had also seen the cellphone videos and other images of numerous bodies laid out.
Ten days after the airstrikes, villagers dug up the last victim from the rubble, a baby just a few months old, the Times said.
An Afghan doctor who runs a clinic in a nearby village told the newspaper he counted 50 to 60 bodies of civilians, most of them women and children and some of them his own patients, laid out in the village mosque on the day of the strike.
Late on Sunday, the military issued a statement saying it was seeking a review of its original finding that five to seven civilians had died in the operation.
"In light of emerging evidence pertaining to civilian casualties in the August 22 counter-insurgency operation in the Shindand District, Herat province, I feel it is prudent to request that US Central Command send a general officer to review the U.S. investigation and its findings with respect to this new evidence," the top US officer in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, said.
"The people of Afghanistan have our commitment to get to the truth."
He did not say what new evidence had emerged.
At the Pentagon yesterday, spokesman Bryan Whitman said the new evidence was "imagery" but would not be more specific.
"There is some evidence that suggests that the evidence that the United States military used in the conduct of its investigation may not have been complete," he said.
The US military said its findings were based on video taken during the operation and topographic photo comparisons of the area before and after the strikes, including analysis of burial sites in the area.
Reports from local clinics and hospitals were also examined, the military said.
More than 500 civilians have been killed during operations by foreign and Afghan forces against the militants so far this year, according to the Afghan Government and some aid groups, fueling public anger and driving a wedge between the government and its Western backers.
