The murder of civilians by US forces and their allies over the past 20 years must be investigated thoroughly and the killers must be brought to justice, although the US has withdrawn from Afghanistan, Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. 

The lives of Afghan people should be protected and the rights of Afghan people should be defended. At stake is international justice and the rule of law and world human rights development, Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at Wednesday's media briefing. 

Wang's remarks were made after US strikes in Kabul which resulted in deaths to civilians in the past several days. 

Wang said that data showed that 47,245 Afghan civilians died by April 2020 in the war in Afghanistan launched by the US.

In the latest tragedy on Sunday, at least ten people, including children, were killed in a US drone strike targeting a vehicle in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

Prior to that, a suicide blast killed 170 Afghan people and 13 US soldiers at Kabul airport last week. Some survivors have raised the possibility that a number of Afghan people were actually killed by American fire amid the chaos and confusion instead of by bombing.

Wang said the killing of Afghan civilians by US troops frequently happened, and he listed several examples. 

In 2019, a US drone strike mistakenly killed at least 30 Afghan farmers in Nangarhar province. A former US soldier and a drone pilot said in a testimony for a UN expert committee that the drone strikes were purely killing for the sake of killing, and that the US airstrikes led to far more Afghan civilian deaths than the official statistics of the US government.

In 2015, an Afghan anti-narcotics police force on a mission was attacked by NATO fighter jets and 15 officers died.

Global Times