KABUL (Dispatches) – At least 13 people, including women and children, have been killed when a pair of mortar blasts ripped through their house in Afghanistan’s northern province of Faryab, a local official says.
The deadly incident occurred in Dawolat Abad district, said General Dilawer Shah Dilawer, the Faryab provincial police chief, on Saturday, adding that the blasts also inflicted injuries to at least three other civilians.
However, he said that at the time it was not clear whether the Taliban militant group, which is active in the region, was behind the shelling. The terror outfit has not commented yet on the incident.
Dilawer further said a security team had been dispatched to the site to probe the deadly attack.
In the past few months, the restive Faryab province has witnessed a fresh wave of violence as the government troops are trying to contain the Taliban insurgency in the region.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military denied reports that an air strike in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar had killed as many as 16 civilians, saying the operation had killed only militant fighters.
"The militants were observed loading weapons into a vehicle and were under surveillance until the vehicle was destroyed by an air strike," said Bob Purtiman, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
"The strike was conducted in the middle of open terrain. There was zero chance of civilian casualties," he said.
Earlier in the day, the district governor of Haska Mena district, Saaz Wali, told reporters that as many as 16 civilians, including women and children had been killed when a passenger van and a nearby house were hit by a U.S. air strike.
The war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history with a cost of about $1 trillion. More than 2,400 Americans have died and another 20,000 have been wounded in the country since the beginning of the invasion. The U.S. currently has about 8,400 soldiers in Afghanistan with another 5,000 troops from NATO allies.