KABUL (Dispatches) - An airstrike by the U.S. has killed 17 Afghan police officers and dozen others injured.
The strike was conducted as Afghan police were fighting the Taliban outside Lashkar Gah in southern Helmand province, with Afghan officials describing the incident as a "mistake”.
Head of the provincial council Attaullah Afghan said 14 policemen were also wounded in the strike, media reported.
It wasn’t clear who carried out the strike, the AP reported, although the Taliban claimed it had been U.S. forces.
The provincial governor’s spokesman Omar Zwak said the strike was carried out by NATO Resolute Support mission forces in the Nahr-e-Seraj area, Al Jazeera reports. DW reports Zwak said that only eight police officers were killed in the NATO strike.
Resolute Support is a NATO-led mission that allegedly advises and assists Afghanistan’s national security forces and consists of over 13,000 troops from the U.S., Germany, the UK, and other countries. NATO has not commented on the incident.
Helmand’s Governor Mohammad Yasin said the air strike is being investigated.