Indian PM supports Afghan reconciliation effort

[May 12, 2011]  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- India's prime minister has told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that he strongly supports the Afghan government's push to reconcile with the Taliban.

Manmohan Singh also says that Afghanistan can depend on India's support in its efforts to rebuild its fractured society. The Indian prime minister arrived in Afghanistan on Thursday for a two-day visit. His talks with Karzai are expected to focus on regional stability, counterterrorism and the India-Afghanistan strategic partnership.

Singh spoke to Karzai privately, but also gave a speech to the president and a group of high-level officials at a lunch in his honor during which he said India's people "strongly support" the effort to negotiate a peace with the Taliban.

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THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE.
AP's earlier story is below.

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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- NATO says its troops and Afghan forces mistakenly killed a young girl and a man who turned out to be a police officer during an overnight raid in eastern Afghanistan.

A NATO statement Thursday says a combined NATO-Afghan force was pursuing a Taliban leader in Nangarhar province's Surkh Rod district on Wednesday, when a man came out of the targeted house threatening them with a gun.

It says the troops killed the man and then discovered he was a police officer. The troops also shot at someone running out of the back of the compound who they believed had a weapon. The soldiers later realized there was no weapon and that they had killed "an unarmed Afghan female adolescent."

A neighbor, who goes by the name of Ayatullah, says the girl was 12 years old.

[Associated Press; By AMIR SHAH and HEIDI VOGT]

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