Libyan officials says NATO hits civilian house (Reuters)

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libyan officials said on Sunday a NATO strike had hit a civilian house in the capital and killed several residents, an allegation which, if confirmed, could sow fresh doubts inside the alliance about its mission in Libya.

Reporters were taken to a residential area and saw a body pulled out of the rubble of a destroyed building.

Later, in a hospital, they were shown the bodies of a child and two others who, officials said, were among a total of seven people killed in the strike.

"There was intentional and deliberate targeting of the civilian houses," deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim told reporters at the site. "This is another sign of the brutality of the West."

NATO made no immediate comment about the air strike, but has said in the past it only targets military or command-and-control sites. There was no way for reporters to verify that all the bodies they were shown came from the building.

Libyan claims of civilian casualties from NATO attacks have sometimes been received skeptically by international observers. On one occasion, Libyan officials presented a wounded child as the victim of an air strike but medical staff passed a note to a foreign journalist saying she was hurt in a road accident.

Libyan authorities have to date been unable to prove that substantial numbers of civilians have been killed by the NATO strikes, but if that changes it could weaken the already wavering commitment of some alliance members.

NATO has been pounding targets in Libya for months in what the alliance says is an operation to protect civilians who rebelled against the 41-year rule of Muammar Gaddafi.

Strains are appearing within NATO member states as the campaign drags on for longer than most of its backers anticipated and Gaddafi remains in power -- even making a show of defiance last week by playing chess with a visiting official.

REBELS KILLED

Rebels from the city of Misrata, about 200 km (130 miles) east of Tripoli, have been trying to push west toward the capital but on Sunday they took heavy casualties when they came under fire from pro-Gaddafi forces.

Four fighters were killed and 18 wounded, according to a doctor at a field hospital near the front line in Dafniyah, an area just west of Misrata.

A Reuters reporter at the field hospital said he saw a procession of pick-up trucks arriving from the front carrying the wounded and the dead, some of them covered up with blankets.

"Gaddafi's forces were underground (in trenches). We were patrolling and they ambushed us," said rebel fighter Mohammed Swelhi, whose friend, Mustafa, was one of two bodies brought from the front in the back of a truck.

"My cousin was injured yesterday. And today my friend was killed. My group, we're all close friends," he said.

Last week, NATO aircraft dropped leaflets around the front line warning pro-Gaddafi fighters they would be targeted by attack helicopters if they did not lay down their arms. But rebels say there has been little sign of the alliance.

"We don't know what NATO is doing," said the doctor, called Nury, who was tending the wounded at the field hospital.

CASH CRUNCH

After four months of civil war, rebels control the eastern third of Libya, the Mediterranean port city of Misrata and much of the Western Mountains region stretching to the border with Tunisia.

But they remain far from seizing their ultimate prize -- Gaddafi's powerbase of Tripoli and its hinterland -- despite air support from the world's most powerful military alliance.

Speaking in the eastern city of Benghazi, the chief rebel oil official castigated Western powers for failing to make good on their promises to help the rebel cause.

"We are running out of everything. It's a complete failure. Either they (Western nations) don't understand or they don't care. Nothing has materialized yet. And I really mean nothing," Ali Tarhouni said in an interview with Reuters.

"All of these people we talk to, all of these countries, at all these conferences, with their great grand speeches -- we appreciate (them) ... but in terms of finances they are a complete failure. Our people are dying," he said.

(Additional reporting by Matt Robinson in Misrata, Saif al-Jubouri in Tripoli and Maria Golovnina in Benghazi; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Jan Harvey.)

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South Korean troops shoot at civilian airliner by mistake (Reuters)

SEOUL, Jun (Reuters) – South Korean Marines fired rifles at a South Korean commercial aircraft flying near the sea border with North Korea, thinking it was one of the communist North's jet fighters, but they never hit their target, military sources said on Saturday.

The shooting illustrates the level of tension between the two Koreas, still technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty, which came close to all-out war last year.

A Marine Corps spokesman said two soldiers guarding an island on the waters off the South's western city of Incheon fired their K-2 rifles for about 10 minutes at around 4 a.m. on Friday.

The plane was later identified as an Asiana Airlines Airbus A320 flying from China making its descent into Incheon, Seoul's main airport.

A defense ministry source said the plane, carrying 119 passengers and crew, was undamaged as it was about 500 to 600 meters out of the range of the hand-held K-2 rifles.

Yonhap News Agency and other local media said the soldiers believed the plane was flying north of the normal air corridor. Asiana officials told the news agency the plane never left its scheduled course.

"We checked yesterday through the air force and the airport control center to make sure there were no abnormalities such as being off course," Yonhap quoted a company official as saying.

An airline official confirmed the plane was an Airbus A320 but made no other comment.

Yonhap and other news reports quoted Marine Corps officers as saying troops would undergo thorough training on how to identify civil aircraft. Airlines will be asked to ensure their planes do not deviate from set courses.

The North denies responsibility in the sinking last March of a South Korean warship and says it was provoked in the second incident, the shelling of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong after the South test-fired shells into disputed waters.

The two attacks killed about 50 South Koreans.

The North this month rejected a proposal from Seoul for a series of three presidential summits after a secret meeting of officials from the two countries. The North denounced the South's call for an apology for the two attacks.

In between the attacks, North Korea unveiled a uranium enrichment program which opens a second route to make a nuclear bomb alongside its plutonium program.

(Reporting by Sung-won Shim; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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ISAF apologises for Afghan civilian deaths (AFP)

KABUL (AFP) – Foreign forces in Afghanistan apologised Monday for the deaths of nine Afghan civilians after President Hamid Karzai criticised an air strike which he and officials said killed 14, including children.

The statement said that the strike in the southern province of Helmand was carried out Saturday after insurgents who had earlier killed a patrolling marine hid in a compound and carried on firing.

The compound hit by the air strike was home to civilians. Local officials said that five girls, seven boys and two women were among those killed by international forces.

"I want to offer my sincere apologies for the nine civilians who were killed during the incident in Now Zad District, Helmand province, that occurred on 28 May," said a statement from Major General John Toolan, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander for the southwest region of Afghanistan.

He stressed it was the coalition's "top priority" to avoid civilian casualties, adding that a full investigation was under way.

"While I know there is no price on human life, we will ensure that we make amends with the families in accordance with Afghan culture," Toolan added.

The apology came after Karzai's office issued what it said was a "last warning" to US and NATO-led troops over civilian casualties following Saturday's incident, which it described as a "great mistake."

In response, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that "we share and take very seriously" Karzai's concerns.

Civilian deaths in international military operations are a highly sensitive topic in Afghanistan, frequently sparking angry public demonstrations and vocal condemnations from Karzai.

Footage and pictures from Helmand showed turbaned men carrying the bodies of children in the aftermath of Saturday's incident.

Aslam, a local elder of Nawzad district, told AFP he "lost 12 relatives while 10 others including children were injured" in the air strike.

He said some shots were fired at ISAF helicopters which flew into the area, adding that the choppers returned after 10 to 20 minutes and fired rockets, killing the "innocent civilians".

Separately, the governor of Nuristan on Sunday told AFP that 18 civilians and 20 police had been killed by "friendly fire" during US-led air strikes against insurgents in his troubled northeastern province.

Nuristan was the scene of heavy battles last week between the Taliban and Afghan security forces. The police and civilians were targeted Wednesday after they were mistaken for militants, Jamaluddin Badr said.

ISAF has said it is sending a fact-finding team to the region but that initial reporting shows no sign of civilian casualties there.

The United Nations says Afghan civilian deaths in the war increased 15 percent to a record high of 2,777 last year. More than three-quarters of the dead were killed in violence blamed on insurgents.

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