Tue 8 Apr 2008, 10:41 GMT By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s government has no information on whether a wanted guerrilla leader was in a village hit by a U.S.-led air strike in the east of the country this week, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

Afghan authorities are investigating the air attack on what the Afghan and U.S. militaries said were heavily armed insurgents in the province of Nuristan. A provincial official said more than 20 civilians were killed in the bombing.

 Asked about a report that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fugitive pro-Taliban insurgent leader wanted by the United States, was the target of the attack, a presidential spokesman said the guerrilla leader’s whereabouts were unknown.

“We have no precise information whether Hekmatyar was there or not … we are not aware as to where Hekmatyar is,” presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told a regular briefing.

The air strike was part of an operation involving Afghan and U.S.-led troops against suspected militants in the rugged region near the Pakistani border where Hekmatyar’s followers are active.

Nuristan’s governor was cited as saying Hekmatyar was believed to have been at a meeting in the village.

Hekmatyar was a prominent commander during the war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s and factional warring in the 1990s.

Security analysts said it was doubtful Hekmatyar would have been in the area and a spokesman for the militant commander said the report he might have been in the area was false.

“Hekmatyar has never been to the area where coalition forces conducted the operation,” the spokesman, Hassan Ansari, told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency.

RESENTMENT
Hamidzada said the Defence Ministry was investigating the reports of civilian casualties and the government would announce the result.

Civilian casualties are a highly sensitive issue for the government and foreign troops based in the country since U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001.

Analysts say civilian casualties can strengthen support for the Taliban in the countryside and feed resentment of the Western-backed President Hamid Karzai and foreign forces in general.

More than 500 civilians were killed during operations by foreign troops against the Taliban last year, according to aid groups and some Afghan officials.

Karzai has repeatedly called on U.S. and NATO-led forces to do everything they can to avoid killing civilians.

The Taliban have vowed to step up their war to expel foreign troops and bring down Karzai’s government and there has been intermittent fighting in recent weeks after a traditional winter lull.

On Tuesday, a soldier from Afghanistan’s NATO-led force was killed in a blast in Ghazni province to the southwest of Kabul, the force said. One soldier was wounded.

The NATO-led force did not identify the casualties or give their nationalities.
(Editing by Robert Birsel and Valerie Lee)