KABUL (AFP) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai Thursday welcomed a new US "war on terror" focus on Pakistan's border areas as more deadly violence underscored rampant militancy seven years after the 9/11 attacks.
Karzai also called for an end to civilian casualties in the fight against extremists after a US strike last month which Afghan and UN officials say left 90 villagers dead.
As thousands of US troops stationed here fell silent to mark the anniversary of 9/11, two Taliban-style suicide attacks struck in the volatile south, leaving a total of four Afghans dead and more than a dozen wounded.
The NATO- and US-led force announced meanwhile that three soldiers had been killed in attacks in the volatile south and east of the country.
A US defence official later confirmed that the two killed in eastern Afghanistan -- one in an attack on a combat outpost, the other in a combat operation -- were Americans.
In London, the British defence ministry confirmed that a British trooper died in a blast in southern Helmand province on Wednesday.
The US-led coalition said separately it had killed "several militants" in a raid on a Taliban commander Wednesday although locals said three civilians were among the dead.
At a press conference, Karzai welcomed comments from the US military chief about a change in strategy to fight the growing violence and said he had long called for a shift to target extremists launching attacks from Pakistan.
Taliban militants fled to Pakistan's tribal regions along the Afghan border after the hardline regime was toppled by a US-led invasion in late 2001 for harbouring Al-Qaeda operatives including leader Osama bin Laden.
"Our words have been clear in this regard: a change in strategy is needed, meaning that we must go to places where there is training and hide-out facilities, and jointly we must go there and destroy that," Karzai said.
He spoke after US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Michael Mullen said he had commissioned "a new, more comprehensive military strategy for the region that covers both sides of that border."
Karzai also paid tribute to the international soldiers in his country to help tackle insurgent violence and expand the Afghan security forces, destroyed in a civil war that preceded the Taliban's 1996-2001 reign.
But he said there had been mistakes, notably the number of civilians being killed in military operations.
"We want civilian casualties in Afghanistan not only to reduce but to stop totally," Karzai said.
The issue has come to the fore with Afghan and UN teams saying more than 90 civilians were killed in US air strikes in the western district of Shindand on August 22.
The US military says only five to seven civilians were killed along with 30-35 militants but it has launched a review of its initial investigation.
There were, however, new claims of civilian casualties Thursday with locals saying US-led coalition troops had killed a woman and her two sons in a raid in central Ghazni province.
The coalition confirmed Wednesday's operation but said that "several militants" were killed and two arrested.
Elders took the bodies of the dead to the town of Ghazni in protest.
"If the governor of Ghazni does not bring those responsible to justice, the people will either commit suicide or stand and fight against Americans," an elder, Fazal Mohammad, told reporters.
The Taliban meanwhile claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing in the southern city of Kandahar that a government official said killed a boy and an adult male and wounded six more people.
A second suicide attacker blew himself up outside a mosque in the Kash Rod centre in Nimroz province and killed a policeman and a civilian, provincial governor Ghulam Dastagir Azad told AFP. Seven more people were wounded.
Soldiers at US military bases in Kabul and at Bagram, north of the capital, meanwhile held ceremonies to remember the nearly 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001.
"War remains a brutal endeavour and mistakes are made but we remain totally committed to the people of Afghanistan," the most senior US commander in the country, General David McKiernan, told soldiers at the largest US base at Bagram.
"We will win this war for our countrymen, for the Afghan people and for the world," he said.
The Taliban meanwhile marked the anniversary with a statement saying the United States was at the "edge of historical defeat" in Afghanistan.
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