Report: 5 Senior Taliban Leaders Killed

Reuters has gone from suggesting there were up to 300 civilian casualties from a US strike aimed at Taliban leaders, to reporting there were few civilian casualties. Other stories are claiming up to 100 Taliban members including as many as 5 Senior leaders were killed.

"The enemy casualty is very high... it might be more than 100," he said adding that five senior commanders of the Taliban were also killed during the operation, Agency France Press reported.

As the story developed, US military sources have been adamant that this was a major blow to the Taliban in Afghanistan. It's still unclear if they got Mullah Dadullah Monsoor, who was believed to be at the scene.

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan and Western military forces said on Saturday there were minimal civilian casualties from an air strike in southern Afghanistan this week that targeted Taliban leaders and may have killed up to 150 people.

Aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan launched a strike in the Baghran area of Helmand province on Thursday, targeting known Taliban commanders, the U.S. military said.

The following day, Afghan authorities said they were checking reports of civilian casualties in the raid and said some 20 wounded had been brought to the main hospital in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.

British forces said 17 adult males and an eight-year-old boy were in hospital in Lashkar Gah suffering from blast injuries. The Afghan Defence Ministry said some 40 men had also been brought to hospital in the main southern city of Kandahar.

"It is interesting there were no females," said British Lieutenant-Colonel Charlie Mayo, suggesting the wounded adult males may have been Taliban fighters. "We are very confident we hit a large meeting of Taliban and they are very sore about it."

Comments

[Steven Den Beste]

Our enemies are aware of our greatest weakness: that our news media want us to lose the war. And our enemies know that they can not and will never win this war on the battlefield.

The only way they can win is by convincing us to give up, and the way to do that is to feed our news media the stories they want.

Which is why all prisoners claim they've been tortured, and all bombing missions are claimed to have killed innocent children in swarms. To listen to our enemies, every bomb we've ever dropped has struck an orphanage.

And our news media eat that stuff up, and report it credulously.

[Bill Adkins]

The flip side of claims our bombing raids kill children and women are claims of the many Al Qaeda #2s killed and 'senior Taliban leaders killed.' They're equally incredible. Didn't used to be this way - but then, along came George W. Bush. There's a man who can't be trusted.

[Blaise MacLean]

When they report the civilian casualties, are they including the guys the Taliban were trying to hang?

Just wonderin'