KABUL (Dispatches) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that NATO's efforts to prevent civilian deaths during its operations are not enough because innocent people keep dying, as the military alliance continued its offensive in a key Taliban stronghold. In a speech at the opening session of the Afghan parliament, Karzai also repeated his call to Taliban fighters to renounce al-Qaida and join with the government — an appeal that may have more resonance after recent arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan. Karzai held up a picture of an 8-year-old girl who he said was the only one left to recover the bodies of her 12 relatives, all killed when two NATO rockets struck their home during the offensive in the southern town of Marjah. He called the incident a tragedy for all Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, U.S. Marines on Friday seized a Taliban compound which insurgents have been using as their field office just south of Marjah’s town center. The compound contained photos of fighters with their weapons, dozens of Taliban-issued ID cards and graduation diplomas from a training camp in Pakistan. Insurgents had fled with their weapons and ammunition.
According to a news report, six NATO troops have been killed in Afghanistan in the worst single-day loss for international forces since the launch of a big offensive to drive Taliban insurgents from the town of Marjah.
The deaths on Thursday, followed by the loss of another soldier on Friday, underscore the risks U.S., UK and Afghan troops face as they seek to clear what commanders describe as pockets of resistance by fighters digging in to resist one of the biggest operations launched by NATO in Afghanistan since 2001.
The seven casualties brought the death toll of international troops from the six-day operation to 12, an official for the NATO-led force in Afghanistan said.
More than a dozen civilians have also lost their lives in the operation. Provincial officials said several dozen insurgents had been killed.
Nick Carter, the British commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, said late on Thursday via a video link to the Pentagon that the offensive was facing resistance in Marjah and might take another month to clear the area of Taliban fighters.
Operation Mushtarak (Together) is the first big offensive launched since Barack Obama, US president, ordered an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in December, and is seen as an important test of whether the latest troop surge can have a lasting impact on the Taliban.
Commanders have said the assault on Marjah is part of a wider plan to secure population centers in southern Afghanistan, the focal point for the insurgency, that will give the Afghan government time to start building the institutions needed to deny insurgents support.
Photo: An Afghan man shouts at Marine Capt. Stephen Karabin, left, and his translator after the man's father was shot dead by a Marine squad in Trikh Nawar, a poppy farmland area northeast of Marja. (Patrick Baz, AFP/Getty Images/February 19, 2010)