Afghan government investigators found that foreign troops dragged 10 civilians, including eight children, from their homes and shot them dead. The investigation team was shown documents from the principal of the school that the students attended, proving their status. The incident took place in the eastern province of Kunar. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which has 113,000 troops in Afghanistan, said it had no activities in the area at the time the incident took place.
But a senior Western military official said US Special Forces have been conducting operations in the area, separately from ISAF. Civilian deaths in war-ravaged Afghanistan are a sensitive issue for the public and fan tensions between Karzai and the foreign troops. The UN earlier this week confirmed 2,038 civilian deaths in the first 10 months of 2009, indicating a 10.8 per cent increase from the same period of 2008.