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International News Title: Afghan leader denounces U.S.-led airstrike, saying 95 were killed KABUL: President Hamid Karzai over the weekend strongly condemned a coalition airstrike that he said had killed up to 95 Afghan civilians - including 50 children - in a village in western Afghanistan and said his government would be announcing initiatives to prevent such heavy loss of civilian life. "Afghanistan takes every necessary measure to avoid and stop such tragic accidents happening in the future," he said. Government officials who traveled Saturday to the village of Azizabad in Herat Province said the death toll had risen to 95 from 76, making the Friday strike one of the deadliest bombing attacks on civilians in six years of the war. The U.S. military said Saturday that it was investigating the attack. The Karzai government has expressed outrage over airstrikes that have led to civilian deaths as popular support for the coalition presence in Afghanistan dwindles. The tension comes at a delicate time for the U.S.-led coalition, which is facing a resurgent Taliban with a perceived shortage of troops, leading it to rely more on air power to battle militants. Karzai criticized an airstrike in eastern Afghanistan on July 6 that killed 27 people in a wedding party, most of them women and children, including the bride. Karzai's spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, said civilians, including children, were brought to a provincial hospital in the town of Jalalabad. The U.S. military is still investigating that attack and has not acknowledged that civilians were killed. Hamidzada said that civilian casualties had been declining over the past several months but that the recent airstrikes had reversed that trend. He said requests to U.S. forces for greater care concerning civilian casualties had had little effect. The coalition has said it does all it can to prevent civilian deaths. "This puts us in a very difficult position," said one government official, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. "It provides propaganda to the Taliban, and, if they don't take responsibility, it actually helps the Taliban." The Afghan official said the government would demand broader, strategic-level cooperation on military operations. There have also been calls among members of the Afghan Parliament and Western analysts to put Special Forces, which often call in airstrikes, under stricter constraints. Afghan officials' account of the Friday airstrike conflicted with that of the U.S. military, which said that coalition forces had come under attack in Azizabad, a village in the Shindand district of Herat Province, and had called in an airstrike that killed 25 militants, including a Taliban leader, Mullah Sadiq, and five civilians. After the Afghan government said Friday that more than 70 civilians had been killed, Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the coalition forces, ordered an investigation into the episode, said the public affairs officer, First Lieutenant Richard Ulsh. "Coalition forces are aware of allegations that the engagement in the Shindand district of Herat Province Friday may have resulted in civilian casualties," said a statement issued from Bagram air base. "All allegations of civilian casualties are taken very seriously. Coalition forces make every effort to prevent the injury or loss of innocent lives. An investigation has been directed." Colonel Rauf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the police chief of the western region, said that there were not any Taliban in the village at the time of the strikes. "There were no Taliban," he said by telephone. "There is no evidence to show there were Taliban there that night." The dead included 50 children, 19 women and 26 men, Ahmadi said. A presidential aide who declined to be identified said that the Interior Ministry and the Afghan intelligence agency had also reported from the region that there were no Taliban present in the village that night. The Afghan National Army, whose commandos called in the airstrike along with American Special Forces, were unable to clarify their original claim, he said. A spokesman for the Afghan Army would not comment Saturday. A tribal elder from the region who helped bury the dead, Haji Tor Jan Noorzai, said people in the village were gathered in memory of a man who was anti-Taliban and was killed last year, and that tribal enemies of the family had given out false information. "It is quite obvious: The Americans bombed the area due to wrong information," he said by telephone. "I am 100 percent confident that someone gave the information due to a tribal dispute. The Americans are foreigners, and they do not understand. These people they killed were enemies of the Taliban."
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Now what exactly is the mission in Afghanistan?
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