KABUL - An American military operation that killed up to 90 civilians was based on false information provided by a rival tribe and did not kill "a single Taliban," the president's spokesman said Sunday.
Afghan police arrested three suspects accused of giving the U.S. military false information that led to the bombardment of the village of Azizabad, the Afghan Interior Ministry has announced.
"There was total misinformation fed to the coalition forces," Humayun Hamidzada, the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, told The Associated Press.
The Aug. 22 bombing has strained the U.S.-Afghan relationship, Hamidzada said. An Afghan government commission found that up to 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, a finding backed by a preliminary U.N. report.
The operation, conducted by U.S. Special Forces and Afghan soldiers, hit Afghan employees of a British security firm and their family members -- the reason the military recovered guns during the operation, Hamidzada said.
The U.S. has said the raid targeted and killed a known militant commander named Mullah Sidiq, but villagers of Azizabad say their homes were targeted because of false information provided by a rival tribesman named Nader Tawakil.
An Afghan parliamentarian has said Tawakil is in the protective custody of U.S. forces; the coalition has declined to comment.
"How the information was gathered, how it was misfed, and their personal animosity led to trying to use the international forces for their own political disputes, which led to a disastrous event and caused a strain on the relationship of the Afghan government and international forces," Hamidzada said. He said not "a single Taliban" was killed.
"So it was a total disaster, and it made it even worse when there were denials, total denials."
The U.S. at first said that 30 militants and no civilians were killed in the operation. A formal military investigation into the incident found it killed up to 35 militants and seven civilians.
But after video images showing at least 10 dead children and up to 40 other dead villagers surfaced last week, the U.S. said it would send a one-star general from the United States to investigate the strike.
Afghanistan's Interior Ministry on Friday said three suspects had been arrested for allegedly giving false information to the American military, but it did not say who was arrested. Hamidzada and the Interior Ministry spokesman have also declined to say who was arrested.
A U.S. military spokeswoman did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the arrests.
Villagers had gathered for a memorial ceremony in Azizabad on Aug. 22 to honor a tribal leader named Timor Shah, who was allegedly killed by Tawakil, the rival tribesman, about eight months ago. Villagers said families had traveled to Azizabad from around the region for the ceremony, one of the reasons why so many children were killed.
The top NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette, has said the U.S. coalition, U.N. and Afghan government would hold a joint investigation, but Hamidzada said the Afghan government would not take part.
"The Afghan government did not agree to a three-way investigation, because we have already completed two investigations," he said. "We have the facts. There is no need to go around to the village and actually harass people one more time and remind them of the terrible ordeal they went through. We have the facts straight, we have all the information."
Karzai has long pleaded with international forces to reduce the number of civilians killed in operations, and now the government is studying its "status of force" agreement governing U.S. and NATO operations in the country. Afghan officials are also reviewing the use of airstrikes by international forces.
Hamidzada said there are ways of killing Taliban without hurting civilians.
"If we only rely on air raids, we know these are not accurate, we know the potential for civilian casualties is extremely high," he said. "So there has to be a combination of ground forces and the use of Afghan military forces. But you cannot just conduct operations from the air alone, because you hurt civilians."
In violence on Sunday, a suicide bomber in a vehicle attacked a convoy carrying Afghan doctors working for the United Nations in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing two doctors and their driver, officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
Also in the Afghan south, a British soldier was killed in an explosion on Saturday, the Ministry of Defense said.
Elsewhere, seven children died after ordnance they were playing with exploded, and militants ambushed and killed seven police, officials said.
