(Adds Interior Ministry comment) KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, March 22 (Reuters) - Afghanistan said on Sunday it was deeply concerned about a U.S. military operation which killed five Afghans that police officials said were civilians, but U.S. forces insisted were militants. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who faces elections in August, has said civilian casualties are the biggest cause of tension between him and his Western backers, who have about 70,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting a Taliban-led insurgency. The U.S. military said it killed five militants and detained four others, with the help of Afghan troops, in the northern province of Kunduz, which borders Tajikistan. "One militant was killed and one surrendered and was detained ... Forces returned fire and cleared the buildings on the compounds, resulting in four militants killed and three suspected militants detained," U.S. forces said in a statement. The Interior Ministry described the dead as "our citizens" and said in a statement it would send a high profile delegation to Kunduz to investigate the raid. "Five of our citizens were killed ... they were killed in the house of the district mayor," the ministry said, adding that it "expressed its deep concern regarding the incident". U.S. forces also said the operation was "in coordination with local Afghan police" but a senior police official in Emamsaheb district, where the operation took place, told Reuters they were not involved, nor aware of the operation. Colonel Abdulrahman Aqtash, head of security operations for Kunduz province, also said the dead were civilians working for the district mayor; two were his guards and three were his servants. But the U.S. military said it was acting on hard intelligence information about the presence of militants in the area. "We had multiple sources of intelligence telling us the targeted individual was there," said Colonel Greg Julian, spokesman for U.S. forces, adding "when we have the level of detail that we have in terms of intelligence we are very certain that we have the right target". Julian said the individuals were given the chance by U.S. troops to exit their compound peacefully, but "they came out fighting and they died fighting ... It's very difficult to classify them as civilians under those conditions." PROBE Colonel Julian said U.S. forces were in touch with the Interior Ministry and the Afghan chief of police and an investigation into the operation would take place. More than 2,100 civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year, 40 percent more than in 2007, the United Nations said. Around a quarter were killed by international forces, it said. On Thursday a raid against al Qaeda bomb-makers, in which foreign and Afghan troops killed two militants in east Afghanistan, led to angry protests by Afghans who said civilians had been killed in the operation. Separately, a roadside bomb attack hit a passing van, killing one passenger and wounding 11 others, just outside Khost city, close to the border with Pakistan, Daad Mohammad, an intelligence officer said. On Saturday, Afghan troops detained 22 suspected militants armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in Zhari district in the southern Kandahar province, the Defence Ministry said in a statement. (Reporting by Wahdat, Kamaal Sadaat and Golnar Motevalli; Editing by Louise Ireland)
A helicopter carries a coffin that contains the remains of Afghanistan's first president, Mohammad Daud Khan, during a ceremony to rebury him, in Kabul March 17, 2009. Daud Khan was shot ...
