A Nato air strike has killed 14 people, all civilians, in south-west Afghanistan's Helmand province, local officials say.

The strike took place in Nawzad district after a US Marines base came under attack on Saturday.

The air strike, which was targeted at insurgents, instead struck two civilian homes, killing two women and 12 children, reports say.

Nato and Afghan troops are looking into the incident.
A group from the Serakala village travelled to Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah, bringing with them the bodies of eight dead children, some as young as two years old, says the BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul.

Earlier, a coalition soldier was killed in a gun battle with insurgents in the area and an air strike was called in, said a spokesman for the international mission.

While insurgents are responsible for most civilian deaths in Afghanistan, the killings of Afghans by foreign soldiers is a source of deepening anger, our correspondent adds.

Separately, 20 Afghan police and 18 civilians were killed on Wednesday in a Nato air strike in north-eastern Afghanistan, in which some 30 Taliban fighters were also killed, the governor of the province of Nuristan has told the AFP news agency.

Daud funeral

In the country's north, security is extrememly tight for the funeral of Gen Mohammad Daud Daud, the police commander for northern Afghanistan who was killed in a suicide bomb attack on the provincial governor's compound in Takhar on Saturday.

He was one of at least six people killed in the attack, which was claimed by the Taliban.

BBC