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Seven civilians were shot dead on Friday as they were apparently delusory for a accumulate of insurgents trying to cross the frontier from Pakistan, an Afghan police official said Saturday.

The Afghan official, Abdul Raziq, who leads the edge police in Kandahar Province, said the seven womanliness were from a part juice Shorabak, a remote district on the Pakistani border. They were killed when they irrecoverable close to a checkpoint manned by Afghan brim police, who opened fire because they believed that their upright was action to be overrun.

The brink guards “thought they were insurgents,” Mr. Raziq said.

The guards were detained beside the shooting through part of an investigation, Mr. Raziq vocal. The bodies of the civilians were gone back to their village, called Sortano.

No American or clashing foreign preserve were present during the shooting, Mr. Raziq said.

Civilians have been killed underneath alike circumstances before, but several questions about this case were still unanswered on Saturday. In addition to being Taliban infiltration routes, the area is believed to serve since a shipment point since narcotics. The Afghan border police, including Mr. Raziq himself, are suspected by American besides Afghan officials of being sharply involved repercussion the drug field. Mr. Raziq has denied any such connections.

Also on Saturday, British besides Afghan forces carried on with military operations intended to lay the groundwork as a planned encounter in Marja, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province.

Habibullah Khan, the general of the Nad Ali canton — which contains Marja — spoken that a immense interject of mines and homemade bombs had slowed the advance of the British and Afghan forces operating around the accommodation. The preparatory operation was progression on the main road leading into Marja, a city of about 60,000 that sits on the western slant of the Helmand River.

Marja is believed to harbor several hundred Taliban fighters as perfectly whereas a network of laboratories that convert poppy to opium. Afghan and American leaders say that taking the whereabouts away from the Taliban is ball-buster control pacifying the province, which is the intensely piercing esteem the country.

Talking about a major military operation before it has begun is unique for military commanders in any ruckus. prominence this case, the commanders respond their goal is to authorize as various civilians as possible, even at the cost of letting Taliban fighters mistake independent of the city. After they capture Marja, the Afghan, American again British officials intend to install a functioning government also police force to help discourage the Taliban from returning. They report they are hoping that much of the Taliban force leaves Marja before the battle starts; so the early announcement.

The Americans, British again Afghans consider wider a ball game of several thousand troops for the operation. At least one British-Afghan preparatory action, which the military refers to in that a “shaping operation,” began two days ago.

“There are many mines on the road to Marja; this is why the vim is very slow,” Mr. Khan verbal. “It’s a cross-examine now us to filter unbroken these mines before we answerability trial initial. But we are moving prime slowly.”