Condemning US for not taking enough precautions to minimise civilian casualties, a human rights group has asked Washington to explain intelligence failure that led to the killing of 15 children in two recent attacks by American forces in Afghanistan.
It urged the Bush administration to allow an independent expert to investigate these and other incidents in which civilians lost their lives as a result of attacks by US forces.
A US military spokesman, while publicly regretting the loss of life, did not admit any wrongdoing on the part of the US military in the attacks, the US-based Human Rights Watch said.
"The US military takes precautions to minimise civilian loss of life during its operations-but obviously not enough," said John Sifton, Afghanistan researcher for HRW.
"There is now a pattern of mistakes, apparently as a result of faulty intelligence, that has led to too many civilian deaths and no clear changes in the way the United States plans and carries out military operations," he said.