KABUL -- Afghan soldiers lying in wait for insurgents in eastern
were bombed by a NATO helicopter Wednesday in a deadly miscommunication that outraged the Afghan military.
Five of the Afghan soldiers, on an ambush operation before dawn in the Andar district of Ghazni province, were killed in the errant airstrike and two others were wounded. The "friendly fire" killings touched a raw nerve in the Afghan defense ministry, which has had to deal with similar incidents in the past.
"Unfortunately this is not the first time this has happened, but we hope this would be the last one," said Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the ministry spokesman.
The deaths came on a day that Britain's defense secretary announced that its troops would leave some of Afghanistan's most violent ground later this year, handing over the Sangin region of Helmand province to the U.S. Marines. The British troops faced treacherous conditions there: About 100 soldiers have died in the area, nearly a third of all British fatalities throughout the war.
The move would reorganize forces in Helmand, consolidating the British presence in the center of the province, one of the most crucial for the NATO coalition. The first wave of President Obama's 30,000 troops deployed to Helmand, where progress has come more slowly than expected in insurgent strongholds such as Marja. British Defense Secretary Liam Fox told parliament, "The result will be a coherent and equitable division of the main populated areas of Helmand."
The British government at the same time approved a temporary boost in troops, sending 300 more soldiers to Afghanistan, putting their total around 10,000, the second-highest number of any nation after the U.S. in Afghanistan.
The "friendly fire" killings were the first of their kind since Gen. David Petraeus took command of the NATO coalition in Afghanistan earlier this week. Such inadvertent deaths, primarily of Afghan civilians, were a regular thorn for his predecessor, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and led him to restrict the use of airpower.
These mistakes complicate what has long been central to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan: building up the Afghan forces so security duties can eventually be handed over to them. On Wednesday, a NATO spokesman apologized on Petraeus's behalf to the families of the slain soldiers.
"This loss of life is tragic," said Navy Capt. Jane Campbell, a NATO spokeswoman, in a statement. "We work extremely hard to coordinate and synchronize our operations, and we deeply regret the loss of lives from our Afghan partners."
NATO spokesman Josef Blotz told a news conference in Kabul that the reason for the mistaken airstrike was "perhaps a coordination issue," according to the Associated Press. "We were obviously not absolutely clear whether there were Afghan national security forces in the area."
Military officials said that there was a NATO assessment team in Ghazni investigating the incident. "We don't know a lot of the circumstances behind this," said Col. Wayne Shanks, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul.
Insurgents also killed three NATO troops in a bombing in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, military officials said.
Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.
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