After three German soldiers were killed in a firefight with the Taliban, friendly-fire casualties followed it as German soldiers ‘accidently’ killed six Afghan policemen driving in civilian cars which failed to heed German commands to stop. Thus the vehicles were blown up by one of the German tanks. However Afghan general Murad Ani insisted that those vehicles were marked as the Afghan military’s and had simply been returning back to base.

President Hamid Karzai; His general Murad Ani says that the vehicles destroyed by the German soldiers were not distinguished as civilian vehicles.

(Photo by Mario Vedder/Getty Images Europe) German soldiers report that the vehicles were NOT marked as military but were 'in fact' civilian vehicles.

From left to right: Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The German troops stationed in the quiet northern region of Afghanistan has faced a recent increase in the rate of Taliban attacks lately which includes the three German soldiers ambushed and killed by more than thirty armed Taliban fighters. That fight had lasted approximately 9 hours and fifty two minutes, air support could not make an appearence due to the NATO command’s fear of accidently killing German soldiers or Afghan civilians.

This is not the first time the German army caused or committed friendly-fire as last September, American airstrikes called upon by Germans requesting air support had bombed two Taliban-hijacked fuel trucks. The strikes left more than 102 Afghan civilians dead which made a dent in the U.S policy of winning the civilians over to the American side to cut off the Taliban and other terrorist groups.

At the meantime however, Germany’s Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg on a televised news conference has admitted that German troops were responsible for the deaths of the six Afghan policemen and offered condolences to their families. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also offered a sympathetic apology to Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan.

It is not known if a German state prosecutor will visit the German army’s Camp Kunduz in Afghanistan next week to charge those responsible for this friendly-fire with manslaughter. There are currently around 4,100 German troops stationed under NATO in Afghanistan.

These war-time incidents will not change any German foreign policy regarding terrorism or Afghanistan according to Karl-Theodor zu Guttenburg. Germany further announced that the government will investigate in this friendly-fire incident, as it is for any other country involved in war, the war in Afghanistan for Germans is increasingly unpleasent, so unpopular the war has become that German politicans have carefully treaded around the word ‘war’.