US strike on IS in Afghanistan kills 21

A suspected US drone strike against Islamic State in Afghanistan killed at least 21 people yesterday, most of them militants but possibly including some civilians, Afghan officials said.

Civilians casualties in US air strikes have long been a source of friction between the Afghan government and Western allies fighting the Taliban-led insurgency since 2001.

The strike in Nangarhar province, on the eastern border with Pakistan, killed 21 people, at least three of them civilians, and wounded another 11, according to Malem Mashooq, the governor of Achin district where the attack occurred.

One of the wounded told Reuters that the attack struck a house where people were sleeping after a gathering to welcome a local elder who had recently returned from the Hajj pilgimage.

"I saw dead and wounded bodies everywhere," Raghon Shinwari said, lying on a hospital bed in Jalalabad city.

Mohammed Ali, the Achin district police chief corroborated that account.

"They were in a house to visit someone who had just come from the Hajj pilgrimage," he said. "A drone targeted the house and killed most of them."

Provincial police spokesman Hazrat Hussain Mashriqiwal said several Islamic State leaders had been killed, but he denied there were any noncombatants among the victims.