“WHAT do you foreigners think you are doing?” an angry doctor demanded of me as three boys, all wounded by shrapnel, were wheeled into Mirawais hospital in Kandahar. One had his right eye blown out and the other two had abdominal injuries. “You bomb civilians, then come in to talk to them? Better if you leave.”

The hospital’s registration book showed that ten civilian casualties, including six children aged 8 to 12, had been admitted on Wednesday morning. There were many more casualties, survivors said. But they claimed that the roads were sealed by Nato troops and that the wounded had escaped across the fields.

Last night one official claimed that as many as 85 civilians had been killed in airstrikes and mortar bombardments around the settlement of Zangawat, in the Panjwayi district of the city. If confirmed, it would be the highest civilian death toll in an operation involving Western forces since the US-led invasion in 2001.

Nato said that a preliminary review by its forces had found the bodies of 12 civilians. The Interior Ministry claimed that 40 civilians and 20 Taleban fighters had died. The accuracy of those figures was impossible to substantiate, and the scene at Mirawais hospital did little to clear the confusion.

“We were under bombardment and airstrike from midnight onwards,” said Toor, 25, an Afghan farmer, lying dust-covered and bloody in a stretcher. “We couldn’t move, there was fire everywhere. Then I was hit in the leg. I crawled out with my wife and three brothers. All of us were wounded. We saw dead and wounded lying everywhere as we escaped: men, women and children.” Before The Times was ejected from the hospital, a second doctor said that 18 civilians had arrived for treatment after being wounded in three villages bombed by Nato.

Relatives of the wounded had only harsh words for their leaders in Kabul, whom they accuse of being bankrupt of courage and integrity.

“I’ve just called President Karzai and he switched off the phone,” said Haji Shah Mohammed, a senior member of the province’s council. “Three of my nephews are dead and three more of my family are wounded. I called the Governor but he switched off his phone too. Who will hear us?”

Afghan officials who travelled from Kandahar to assess the casualties in the Zangawat area said that they could not get close because of Taleban fighters there. “We couldn’t get access to the place we wanted as there were still Taleban in the area,” one official said.

Officials in Kandahar and Kabul claimed that 60 to 85 civilians had died in the attacks, a figure backed by locals. Nato had already said that an estimated 48 militants were killed in three incidents in Panjawi between late Tuesday morning and early Wednesday. The Nato statement made no mention of civilian casualties. Yesterday they increased the claim to suggest that 70 Taleban had been killed in Panjwayi, and admitted that “there may have been civilian casualties”.

It is clear that Nato used airpower and, in at least one incident, mortars, in response to Taleban attacks on government and Nato forces. It is also clear that Taleban fighters are still infiltrating Panjwayi. Nato and Afghan forces remain vulnerable to attack, security is minimal, civilians are dying and local anger towards foreign troops and the Kabul Government is growing by the day.

CIVILIAN TOLL CLAIMS

December 2001: US aircraft attack a convoy transporting tribal leaders to inaugauration of new Afghan government. About 60 killed, US claims al-Qaeda leaders among them

July 2002: 46 die, many from the same family, when a wedding party in Uruzgan province is bombed in error

22 May 2006: Governor of Kandahar province says 16 civilians killed in bombing on suspected Taleban hideout

18 October 2006: Afghan officials claim Nato airstrikes killed nine civilians in the village of Ashogho, Kandahar

There is no official record of civilian fatalities in Afghanistan

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