by Our Foreign Desk

NATO air attacks killed seven Afghan soldiers yesterday, in what the provincial governor called a “mistake due to bad co-ordination.”

The incident happened as coalition helicopters were flying over an area of Logar province where fighting was taking place between Afghan troops and Taliban fighters, the Afghan Defence Ministry said.

Insurgents fired at the helicopters, which retaliated.

The crew apparently mistook an army checkpoint for a Taliban position and destroyed it.

An unspecified number of troops were “killed and wounded,” the Defence Ministry said.

Logar provincial army commander Abdul Razaq said the early-morning attack had taken place in the Baraki Barak district, about 30 miles east of Kabul.

Mr Razaq revised an earlier higher figure and said that seven troops had been killed and five wounded in the helicopter strike.

District governor Mohammad Rahim Amin said the Nato air strike was “likely a mistake, due to bad co-ordination” in an area where Taliban insurgents are highly active.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani expressed his “profound sorrow” over the tragedy and appointed a team to “comprehensively probe the incident and come up with clarification surrounding the air strike.”

Mr Ghani also urged international forces to “take maximum precautions” not to harm Afghan civilians and troops in their future operations.

US military spokesman Colonel Brian Tribus said the coalition was aware of an incident in Logar and was investigating.

Nato ground forces were withdrawn from Afghanistan last year, but the alliance’s air operations are continuing.