Deadly Afghan raid pressures Berlin

BERLIN, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- The new German government has to cope with its first scandal after a senior minister and the country's military chief resigned over an alleged coverup linked to a NATO bombing that killed dozens of civilians in Afghanistan.

Labor Minister Franz Josef Jung resigned over the weekend after he had become unbearable for the center-right government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Jung, a former defense minister, fell over allegations that he tried to cover up the real extent of civilian casualties linked to a German-ordered bombing raid in Afghanistan.

Current Defense Minister Theodor zu Guttenberg also pushed into resignation Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the chief of staff of the German armed forces.

The Sept. 4 bombing, executed by two U.S. F-15 jets and ordered by German Bundeswehr Col. Georg Klein, killed an estimated 142 people, most of them civilians, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The strike targeted two fuel trucks stuck in a riverbank some 5 miles outside a German base. The trucks had been seized by Taliban insurgents, and Klein feared they could be used to attack his base.

Both officials defended the strike until recently; Jung initially said only Taliban insurgents were killed, and Schneiderhan vowed that Klein had done the right thing in ordering the raid.

They came under severe pressure, however, when German mass daily Bild revealed that both officials must have had hard evidence of civilian casualties as early as Sept. 5.

The daily said that commanders in Afghanistan informed the German military headquarters in Potsdam, near Berlin, about two dead teenagers in a Kunduz hospital and several other teenagers suffering from shrapnel injuries. The kids had flocked to the trucks to pick up fuel.

Daily Bild on its Web site posted a confidential military video that showed that Klein must have been warned about a possible civilian presence near the trucks. In such a case, NATO's rules of engagement do not allow an airstrike. The German officials had protected Klein despite what the German media has called an "unnecessary bombing."

The two F-15 jets had made repeated requests to fly low over the area to scare potential civilians away, but Klein denied this, ordering an immediate bombing instead, German news magazine Der Spiegel reports. Klein also told the pilots that the insurgents posed a direct threat to the German base, and that German troops had "enemy contact" -- despite the fact that no German troops were near the scene.

U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the new commander of the international force in Afghanistan, visited the site a day after the airstrike, which he criticized harshly. McChrystal has been eager to reduce civilian casualties linked to NATO operations.

Zu Guttenberg, the German defense minister, recently distanced himself from the strike and said he was backing a full inquiry into the bombing.

"It's obvious that mistakes have been made before and after the airstrike," zu Guttenberg told German daily Bild. "Transparency is key for trust and recognition."

With 4,250 soldiers on the ground, Germany is the third-largest supplier of foreign troops in Afghanistan.