A British Harrier pilot managed to abort a bomb attack in mid-flight, steering a smart bomb away from its intended Taleban target after a group of civilians strayed into the target area, footage released by the Ministry of Defence showed today.

The footage, which was shot from the camera on the jet last year but has been only now declassified, shows that the bomb had already been launched when its target, a Taleban commander in a vehicle, stopped next to a group of civilians.

The RAF pilot then made the snap decision to abort the strike and successfully steered the Paveway IV bomb, which can be controlled by the pilot in flight, into a safe area of desert. “In this instance I found and tracked the target and had deployed my weapon,” said the pilot, who asked not to be named. “However, as it was flying to the target I saw the vehicle stop amongst civilians.

“Every pilot dreads the prospect of inadvertently causing harm to any innocent civilian, so I knew I had to act immediately.

“The Paveway IV smart bomb is amazingly accurate and incredibly flexible. I can control it whilst it is still in flight, so I used my onboard laser to guide the bomb into a safe area of open desert.

“It’s a shame I couldn’t prosecute the target as we had planned, but it was much better to let him go free this time than risk killing innocent civilians.”

The pilot said that British forces continued to track the Taleban commander and killed him two days later.

The Paveway IV was first used by British forces in Afghanistan last year.

The deaths of Afghan civilians in Western airstrikes have been an issue of huge controversy for the Afghan population. Western military commanders have issued increasingly restrictive rules of engagement in an attempt to limit such deaths.

In the first six months of 2009 the UN recorded that 1,013 civilians were killed in Afghanistan by the Taleban or pro-government Western and Afghan forces. This was an increase of 24 per cent on the same period of the previous year. However, deaths caused by the Taleban were 59 per cent of the total, while pro-government forces cause 30.5 per cent. In 2007 the Taleban were held responsible for 46 per cent of civilian deaths while pro-government forces cause 41 per cent.

Last week the new commander of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, told a debate on the Afghan war organised by the charity Afghanaid in London that civilian casualties had dropped by 95 per cent since the imposition of new restrictions in June by the Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.

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