President Hamid Karzai has made an immediate demand of President-elect Barack Obama to prevent civilian casualties.
Kandahar province villager Abdul Jalil says he was hosting a wedding party for his niece when Taliban militants fighting U.S. forces took cover near his home. Jalil says 37 people were killed when U.S. warplanes later bombed the wedding party.
No Afghan officials could immediately confirm the number of casualties, which happened in a remote and dangerous part of Kandahar province. But Karzai referred to the incident at a news conference Wednesday held to congratulate Obama on his U.S. presidential election victory.
Karzai said he hopes the election will "bring peace to Afghanistan, life to Afghanistan and prosperity to the Afghan people and the rest of the world." He applauded America for its "courage" in electing Obama.
But he also used the occasion to immediately press Obama to find a way to prevent civilians casualties in operations by foreign forces. He then said airstrikes had caused deaths in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province.
"Our demand is that there will be no civilian casualties in Afghanistan. We cannot win the fight against terrorism with airstrikes," Karzai said. "This is my first demand of the new president of the United States - to put an end to civilian casualties."
The U.S. military says it is investigating the reports but a spokesman said "if innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences."
The alleged airstrikes come only three months after the Afghan government found that a U.S. operation killed some 90 civilians in western Afghanistan. A U.S. report said 33 civilians died in that attack.
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