By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made a surprise visit Friday to Afghanistan, where he met with President Hamid Karzai and the commander of NATO troops.

U.S. troops, meanwhile, raided three compounds in eastern Afghanistan, killing four suspected militants, officials said. A villager, however, said those killed were civilians.

Ban's first visit to the country was aimed at "ensuring solid coordination between the U.N. and Afghan government in their joint efforts here," said Adrian Edwards, the U.N. spokesman in Afghanistan.

Along with Karzai, Ban met the head of NATO's International Security Assistance Force, Gen. Dan McNeill, and other officials, Edwards said.

The visit comes ahead of a July 2-3 conference in Rome, which will seek ways of improving the weak justice system in Afghanistan, Edwards said.

Karzai and Ban will preside over the conference along with Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema, the Italian Foreign Ministry said.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, NATO's Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Tom Koenigs, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, will also be among the participants as will some regional players like Pakistan.

Issues on the agenda include access to justice, prison reform and legal training. Organizers say the conference will try to provide tools to improve coordination among law-enforcement officials and tackle corruption.

Elsewhere, U.S.-led and Afghan troops clashes and airstrikes in the south left 17 more militants dead, in addition to the action in the east, officials said

The raid in the eastern Nangarhar province targeted compounds suspected "of harboring Taliban and foreign fighters," the coalition said.

"Taliban forces inside two of the compounds attempted to engage Coalition forces as they approached," the statement said. "The forces fired on the militants, killing the assailants and quickly securing the compounds."

During the search, troops found rocket-propelled grenade launchers and several grenades, which were removed and destroyed, the statement said.

The statement did not identify those killed or detained, but said that no civilians were injured during the operation.

But Malek Zaman, an elder of the village where the raid took place, said the U.S. troops used explosives to bust through the house gates in an operation that killed four people, a local man, two of his sons and his grandson.

Zaman denied that the four were militants, claiming that those killed and detained were innocent civilians who were not involved in the insurgency against government and foreign troops.

"People will be angry and might even react to these killings," Zaman said.

Violence is soaring in Afghanistan, with over 2,400 people, mostly militants, killed in fighting this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Western military and Afghan officials.

It is the killing of civilians at the hand of U.S. and NATO-led troops, however, that has infuriated Afghanis, and prompted Karzai to publicly state that lives of Afghan civilians were not "cheap." He urged restraint and better coordination of military operations with the Afghan government.

While militants killed 178 civilians in attacks through June 23, Western forces killed 203, according to an AP count based on figures from Afghan and international officials.

Exact counts are nearly impossible to come by. Separate figures from the U.N. and an umbrella organization of Afghan and international aid groups show that, through May 31, the number of civilians killed by international forces was roughly equal to those killed by insurgents.

In other violence, a suicide car bomber exploded near a NATO's International Security Assistance Force convoy in Paktika province on Thursday, killing one Afghan civilian and wounding six other people, including two ISAF soldiers, a NATO statement said.

Those injured were transported to a military medical facility for treatment, a statement said.

In neighboring Zabul province's Mizan district, Taliban fighters ambushed a joint NATO and Afghan patrol on Thursday and in the ensuing clash two militants were killed and five others were wounded, said Mohammad Younus Akhunzada, a district chief.

The Taliban left the dead bodies on the field and took the wounded with them, Akhunzada said. There were no Afghan or NATO casualties in the clash, he said.

On Wednesday, a series of clashes and airstrikes in southern Afghanistan left 15 suspected militants killed, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Eight militants died in fighting in Helmand province's Gereshk district, and seven more were killed in an airstrike in Tirin Kot in Uruzgan province, the statement said.

Printer Friendly Version | E-mail this to a friend

digg