KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan officials Friday were investigating the cause of at least 14 civilian deaths in the northern Kunduz province after a battle with the Taliban that involved U.S. airstrikes.
Mohammad Radmanish, a spokesman with the Afghan Defense Ministry, said joint Afghan and U.S. airstrikes occurred in the Chahar Dara district of Kunduz during a battle with Taliban forces there on Thursday.
"The Ministry of Defense is deeply saddened," Radmanish said, adding that high-ranking officials within his department were traveling from Kabul to investigate.
Lt. Col. Martin O'Donnell, a NATO spokesman, said in an email that the United States carried out airstrikes in the area in support of Afghan troops on the ground.
But, "on-the-ground assessment of those strikes reveals no indications they caused civilian casualties," O'Donnell said.
Mohammad Yusuf Ayubi, a member of provincial council in Kunduz, said the people killed - including women and children - were part of three families who lived less than 100 yards from a government base.
"I do not know who carried out the airstrikes, but these people were killed in the aerial attack," Ayubi said.
Kunduz, where Taliban forces have a strong presence, has been the site of civilian deaths caused by airstrikes in the past.
In April, Afghan helicopters attacked a Taliban stronghold in a location that was being used as a training camp for the group in Dashti Archi district, killing dozens of people, including civilians.
In 2015, a U.S. gunship plane fired on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz city, killing at least 30 people, including doctors and patients.
U.S. officials later said that those involved did not realize the buildings they targeted were a hospital. Sixteen people were disciplined in that incident, but the Pentagon found that it did not amount to a war crime because it wasn't intentional.
So far, 2018 has been a record year for civilian deaths in Afghanistan.
A recent report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan found that 1,692 Afghan civilians have been killed in the first six months of the year, more than in any comparable period during the past decade.
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The Washington Post’s Sharif Hassan contributed to this report.