A U.S. airstrike killed 10 civilians in western Afghanistan earlier this month, Afghan officials said on Wednesday.
A member of Afghanistan’s human rights commission told the Associated Press the civilians were killed in a Jan. 8 drone strike targeting a Taliban offshoot in Herat province. Three women and three children were among them, the official said.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for confirmation of the strike and whether it caused civilian casualties.
One Herat-based provincial council member, Wakil Ahmad Karokhi, reportedly said the Jan. 8 strike also killed Mullah Nangyalia, the commander of a Taliban splinter group, along with 15 other militants. Nangyalia and his group might have been useful against regular Taliban forces in the area, Korokhi said, fighting the group “when no one else would do it.”
Little is known about Nangyalia, but he is believed to have been a district commander in Herat, according to Bill Roggio at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Nangyalia’s group split from the regular Taliban, formally known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, some time in 2015 — around the time Taliban leadership admitted their former leader, Mullah Omar, had been dead for more than two years.
Civilian casualties reached a record high in Afghanistan between July and September, with more than 4,300 reported — a 40% increase over the same time period in 2018.
