Hundreds of protesters on Wednesday closed Kabul – Gardiz highway, accusing the Afghan forces of killing eight civilians in an airstrike.
Protesters claimed that Afghan intelligence operatives have killed eight civilians including women and children during an operation in Muhammad Agha district on Tuesday night.
Demonstrators called on the government to punish the culprits.
Officials said on Monday that a Tajikistan jet carried out airstrikes in Darqad district in Takhar province along the border.
Earlier in the day, the provincial governor’s spokesman Mohammad Jawid Hejri confirmed the incident and said a clash broke out on Sunday afternoon between drug smugglers in Afghanistan and Tajik border guards.
He said Tajik border security fired a number of rockets into the area before “fighter jets” carried out an airstrike early Monday morning.
Hejri said the jets were “foreign” and were either from Russia or Tajikistan.
However, officials confirmed later in the day that there had been one fighter jet involved and that it was from Tajikistan.
U.S. Army General John Nicholson, Commander of Resolute Support forces in Afghanistan has apologized for the civilian casualties in recent airstrikes in northern Kunduz province.
Gen. Nicholson who traveled to Kunduz on Tuesday with top Afghan security officials to assess the security situation in the province, said: “I am sorry for the civilian casualties that have occurred recently again.”
“Will do everything we possibly can to avoid any civilian casualties,” he said.
