WELLINGTON, March 27 (Xinhua) -- The commander of New Zealand's armed forces on Monday refuted claims that special forces killed civilians in a botched raid in Afghanistan but questions remained about the accusations.
Chief of Defence Force Lieutenant-General Tim Keating told a live broadcast press conference that the claims made by two investigative journalists in the book "Hit and Run" appeared to have confused a raid led by New Zealand's Special Air Service (SAS) with an unrelated action 2 km away.
Keating conceded that civilians might have been killed in the SAS-led raid, dubbed Operation Burnham, on the village of Tirgiran in August 2010.
However, he said, the premise of the book was incorrect, and New Zealand troops had never operated in the two villages named in the book - Khak Khuday Dad and Naik.
The book, released last week claimed the Special Air Service led U.S. and Afghan forces in a raid that killed six civilians including a 3-year-old girl in the two villages in Afghanistan's Baghlan province.
Another 15 civilians were wounded in the villages where the SAS mistakenly believed they would find insurgents who had attacked a New Zealand patrol 19 days earlier, killing a New Zealand officer, in neighboring Bamiyan, the book claimed.
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