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June 8, 2012

Commander Offers Apology for Deaths in U.S. Airstrike

By DION NISSENBAUM

KABUL--U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, delivered a rare personal apology on Friday to the relatives of 18 Afghans, most of them women and children, who had been killed earlier this week in a U.S. airstrike.

Gen. Allen visited Logar province a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai cut short a trip to a summit in China so he could deal with the fallout from the airstrike, which targeted suspected Taliban commanders meeting in a village compound. Mr. Karzai has denounced the U.S. for inflicting Afghan civilian casualties during Wednesday's operation.

Gen. Allen's meeting with government leaders, tribal elders and relatives of the casualties in Logar, some 50 miles south of Kabul, marked the first time since he took command 11 months ago that he has flown to personally apologize to victims of U.S. airstrikes in their home area, according to the coalition.

"I've come here today to offer you my condolences and my regrets and, importantly, to apologize to each of you for this tragedy," Gen. Allen told the Logar families. "I have a family of my own and I see the faces of my own children and I know that no apology can bring back the life of the children or the people who perished in this tragedy and this accident."

While U.S. military officials said they are still waiting for the results of a joint American-Afghan investigation to determine how many people died in the attack, United Nations officials have put the death toll at 18, including five women and nine children.

A succession of similar civilian casualties in recent coalition airstrikes has angered Mr. Karzai, who warned last month that such incidents could undermine the new strategic-partnership agreement between the U.S. and Afghanistan.

Military investigators are trying to determine why the coalition initially reported that no civilians were killed in the Logar airstrike. In its first report on the early-morning raid Wednesday, the coalition said that two women were lightly wounded by the U.S. Military officials launched the investigation after angry Afghan relatives challenged that account, bringing the bodies of the women and children to the district center.

U.S. soldiers ordered the airstrike during an attempt to capture a Taliban commander meeting with some of his subordinates, according to the coalition.

Three American and two Afghan soldiers were injured during the battle, according to Afghan officials. The force called on people to come out of the compound, but none did, the coalition said. The Taliban fighters may have warned the civilians that they would be shot if they came out of the homes, according to one Western official.

Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com