At least 25-30 Pakistani and Chechen Taliban were among those killed in the US-led airstrikes in Farah province on Monday, western Afghanistan Police spokesman Abdul Rauf Ahmadi said on Wednesday. Teams from the Afghan government, international forces and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) would travel to the area to investigate, he added.Meanwhile, western Farah Province Governor Rohul Amin said he feared that 100 civilians had been killed. Provincial Police chief Abdul Ghafar Watandar said the death toll could be even higher. If confirmed, those even higher figures could make the incident the single deadliest for Afghan civilians since the campaign to topple the Taliban started in 2001.
President Hamid Karzai sent a joint US-Afghan delegation to investigate the incident, his office said. Provincial Police Chief Watandar said Taliban guerrillas had used civilians as shields, herding them into houses in the villages of Geraani and Ganj Abad, that were then struck by US-led coalition warplanes. The airstrikes killed about 120 civilians and destroyed 17 houses, he said.