WASHINGTON, Saturday (Reuters) -
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday called on the United States to halt air strikes in his country, following attacks this week that Afghan officials said killed 147 people.
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“We demand an end to these operations an end to air strikes,” Karzai said in Washington in an interview with CNN.
Farah Province deputy governor Yunus Rasooli told Reuters on Friday that residents of two villages hit this week by U.S. warplanes had produced lists with the names of 147 people killed in the attacks.
Karzai told CNN's “Situation Room” that earlier in the beginning of the seven-year-old war that ousted the Islamist Taliban, Afghans had tolerated air strikes, but mounting civilian deaths had eroded that understanding.
“We cannot justify in any manner, for whatever number of Taliban or for whatever number of significantly important terrorists, the accidental or otherwise loss of civilians,” he said.
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