Following an investigation, the UN Assistance Mission for Afghanistan announced on August 29 that it was convinced that at least 90 Afghan civilians had been killed in a US air strike that took place on August 22 in the village of Azizabad in Herat Province.

The UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said in a statement that an investigation had "found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men. Fifteen other villagers were wounded." The victims were part of a crowd that had gathered in Azizabad for a customary commemoration service that was held on the 40th day after the death of a local leader.

Mohammad Iqbal Safi, head of the parliamentary defense committee, told the International Herald Tribune that the 60 children were aged between 3 months to 16 years old and were killed while they slept.

"It was a heartbreaking scene," he said. "The destruction from aerial bombardment was clearly evident with seven to eight houses having been destroyed, with serious damage to many others," Eide added. "Local residents were able to confirm the number of casualties, including names, age and gender of the victims." This was one of the largest incidents of US-inflicted civilian casualties since the 2001 invasion, although it was not the only one.

The United States immediately denied that any civilians had been killed in the attack and defended the operation, despite the civilian casualties, as "legitimate".

The White House said that some AC-130 bombers had attacked a meeting of Taliban fighters in Herat province, killing at least 30. The truth came to light later, as Herat district officials, Afghan military officers, journalists and a senior minister in the government of President Hamid Karzai, Nematullah Shahrani, visited the site.

Shahrani disputed the US claims and challenged the American military to provide proof that the Taliban were at the scene of the attack.

The massacre in Herat has been one of the worst atrocities resulting from the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, but it has not been the only one that has taken place recently.

On July 6, US warplanes bombed a wedding party in Helmand province, killing 47 people, mostly women and children, including the bride. The US has not as yet acknowledged that civilians were killed in that attack.

On July 15, the US military admitted killing several civilians in southwestern Farah province, near the Iranian border. The deputy provincial governor Mohammad Younus Rasouli confirmed an AFP report that nine women, two men and a boy had been killed.

On August 9, Afghan soldiers and civilians confronted British troops at a Royal Irish Regiment (RIR) base following the death of a child, the Belfast Telegraph reported. The shots fired by British soldiers wounded a mother and her daughter and led to the subsequent death of the latter. The death sparked outrage among the local people and members of the Afghan Army, who then surrounded the RIR base. After coming under fire, the British troops withdrew to another base, where they remained until the situation calmed down.

This is while on the previous day, US-led forces had also killed "by mistake", four women and a child in central Afghanistan.

As the United States increased its air war, civilian casualties have climbed rapidly over the past two years. More than 1,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in 2008, (up to September), a major increase over the previous year. US military sources claim that these killings are "accidents" and "mistakes".

However, the massacres of innocent men, women and children are inevitable given the neo-colonial nature of the war and the brutal counter-insurgency methods that the United States and NATO forces are increasingly using against the growing popular resistance.

The Herat attack has done serious harm to the Karzai government among the Afghan population. President Karzai has attempted to mitigate the harm by issuing his own statement, condemning the occupying forces for "martyring at least 70 people, most of them women and children", firing a top army general and announcing that his cabinet was reviewing the presence of NATO forces in the country.

However, this latter suggestion was denied by NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero, who said that the Alliance had not been contacted by the Afghan government regarding any renegotiations.

The Afghan ministries of foreign affairs and defense insisted, for their part, that they would seek to regulate raids with a status of forces agreement and a negotiated end to "air strikes on civilian targets, uncoordinated house searches and illegal detention of Afghan civilians".

"Unfortunately, to date, our demands have not been addressed. Rather, more civilians, including women and children, are losing their lives as a result of air raids," the ministries said. The upper house of the Afghan Parliament also passed a resolution that warned that if foreign troops continued to cause civilian casualties, "people will rise against them".

Actually, the slaughter of civilians has brought numerous anti-US protests in different cities of Afghanistan. Hundreds of outraged villagers have reportedly attacked Afghan soldiers with stones in Azizabad when the Afghan troops tried to give them food and clothes. Protesters also shouted slogans against US presence in the country and demanded for the trial of those responsible for the bloody raid. Other protests took place in Kabul and other Afghan cities.

In a society where family, clan and tribal links are a part of daily life, a single assassination can sow a generation of enmity and spark bloody incidents.

The detention of hundreds of suspects for years without trial at the Bagram air base and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have also bred Afghans' anti-occupation sentiment and their ancient dislike of foreign invaders.

The problem for the US and other NATO partners is that the hardships of occupation and the increasing number of civilian deaths are shifting the resistance towards a war of national liberation, and no foreign power has ever been capable of winning that battle in Afghanistan.

Once a population turns against an occupier, there are few places in the world where the latter can win.

Afghanistan, with its huge size and daunting geography, is certainly not one of them. The UN considers one third of Afghanistan "inaccessible", and almost half of it as "high risk". There is, therefore, no mystery as to why things have started to go increasingly badly for the United States and its allies.

Due to the increasing popular sympathy and support, the Taliban and other anti-occupation forces that are based in the ethnic Pashtun south and eastern provinces of the country have re-established their influence and already control large parts of these areas.

All this indicates that as the fighting in Afghanistan intensifies, the United States and its allies will step up their efforts to suppress the anti-occupation insurgency by all means and this will lead to more massacres.