8 U.S. civilians reported dead in Afghan blast

— KABUL - A suicide bomber detonated his explosives vest at a military base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing eight American civilians, U.S. officials said.

The explosion occurred at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province, near the Afghan border with Pakistan. The base serves as an operations and surveillance center for the CIA near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, The Washington Post reported on its Web site, citing U.S. officials.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed that eight Americans died in the attack.

“We mourn the loss of life in this attack, and are withholding further details pending notification of next of kin,” he said.

The Post reported on its Web site that U.S. sources confirmed that all the dead and injured were civilians,adding that most of them were probably CIA employees or contractors. At least one Afghan civilian was also killed, the sources said, according to the Post reporting on the newspaper’s Web site.

In Kabul, a spokesman for the international coalition force in Kabul said no U.S. or NATO troops were killed in the afternoon explosion at Chapman, one of dozens of forward operating bases that support reconstruction efforts and other civilian operations across the nation.

An attacker wearing a suicide vest caused the explosion, according to a senior U.S. official in Washington. Another senior U.S. official in Washington said there were conflicting reports on the number of casualties, but that others were injured in the attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because not all details about the attack had been confirmed.

Wazir Pacha, a police spokesman in Khost province, said local residents reported hearing a blast on the base where an explosion in January killed an Afghan civilian and wounded four others. Soon afterward, two helicopters landed, a police officer in Khost said.

Separately on Wednesday, NATO questioned Afghan reports that international troops killed 10 civilians, including schoolchildren, in a weekend attack that prompted hundreds of angry Afghanprotesters to burn an effigy of President Barack Obama and chant “death” to America.

The head of an investigative team appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that eight students between the ages of 12 and 14 were among the dead discovered in a village house in a remote section of Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan. NATO said in a statement released late Wednesday night that while there was no direct evidence to substantiate the claims, the international force had requested and welcomed a joint investigation to reach an “impartial and accurate determination” of what happened in the attack.

Conflicting accounts of what occurred during fighting in Kunar’s Narang district prompted an emotional outcry over civilian deaths, one of the most sensitive issues for international troops fighting the more than 8-year-old war. Although insurgents are responsible for the deaths of far more civilians, those blamed on coalition forces spark the most resentment and undermine the fight against militants.

Several hundred Afghans demonstrated in the capital of Kabul and in the eastern city of Jalalabad where the likeness of Obama, adorned with a small American flag, burned on a pole held above demonstrators.

In Kabul, protesters carried signs that read: “Does peacekeeping mean killing children?” and “Stop killing us.” A protester with a bullhorn called on Obama to “take your soldiers out of Afghanistan.”

Qari Hamidullah, a student protest leader in Jalalabad, urged the Afghan government to call for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.

“If they do not accept our demand, we will put down our pens, take rockets and go to the mountains to fight the Americans and their forces,” Hamidullah told protesters, who chanted and waved their arms in the air.

Karzai said in a statement that he talked to the relatives of the Kunar victims to express his condolences and pledge to deliver to justice those responsible for the attack.

Asadullah Wafa, a senior adviser to Karzai who led a 10-member investigative team to Kunar province, said he was convinced that all those killed were innocent civilians.

“I have talked to the principal of the school in the village, and he gave us details about the killed children,” Wafa said. “The schoolchildren cannot be al-Qaida. I confirm they areinnocent people killed by mistake. I talked to Karzai about the findings.”

The bodies had already been buried by the time Wafa’s team arrived Tuesday.

Wafa said the villagers demanded that informants “whogave the wrong target to the Americans must be found and punished by a court.” Rival clans in Afghan villages have been known to settle scores against rival tribes by giving false reports on insurgent activity.

According to the NATO statement, the initial review by Wafa’s delegation “asserted that the dead were unarmed civilians removed by international forces from their homes and shot.”

The international force’s account was much different.

NATO said that Saturday, a joint coalition and Afghan security force entered the village of Ghazi Khan looking for an insurgent group responsible for a series of attacks in the area.

“As the joint assault force entered the village, they came under fire from several buildings and in returning fire killed nine individuals,” the NATO statement said. “Several assault rifles, ammunition, and ammonium nitrate used in bombmaking were discovered.”

Col. Wayne Shanks,spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, said at a news conference Wednesday that the coalition force goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.

“In fact, you can see that our enemy, the insurgents, have very little regard for the Afghan people,” he said.

The latest figures released by the United Nations show that 2,021 civilians died during clashes in the first 10 months of 2009, up from 1,838 for the same period in2008. International forces’ stepped-up efforts to protect the population has reduced civilian casualties. Taliban insurgents were blamed for 68 percent of the deaths this year - three times more than NATO forces, according to the U.N.

Information for this article was contributed by Pauline Jelinek, Matthew Lee, Amir Shah and Dusan Stojanovic of The Associated Press and by Joby Warrick, Karen DeYoung, Michael Shear and Julie Tate of The Washington Post.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/31/2009

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