AFGHANISTAN - May 23 - Karzai Orders Inquiry Into US Airstrike.

Pres Hamid Karzai orders Afghan security forces to investigate the American aerial bombardment of an Afghan village that killed at least 16 civilians. As reports of the numbers of casualties from the operation continued to rise, officials in Karzai's administration told news agencies that the president would also be asking for an explanation from the US commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Lt Gen Karl Eikenberry. Accounts of the attack filtering in from the village of Tolokan, which is 32kms, or 20 miles, west of Kandahar but sealed off by Afghan and foreign troops, suggested that more 20 villagers were killed, possibly many more. Wounded villagers being treated in a Kandahar city hospital said they knew of 16 civilians killed and 15 wounded. Many Taliban fighters were also killed in the attack, they said. But Abdul Qadar Noorzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar, said villagers coming to see him reported that 20 to 25 civilians were killed and 30 to 35 wounded. The wounded were taken to the Kandahar hospital and to Pakistan, he said. The Panjwai district chief had confirmed that 20 civilians were killed. The coalition forces said they had carried out a successful operation against Taliban fighters in the area and were looking into reports of civilian casualties. In further violence, four Afghan employees of a medical charity were killed in a bomb explosion on May 23 in central Afghanistan. The four were driving through Wardak Province south of Kabul when the mine exploded, said Hafizullah Salaam, an aide to the governor of the province.