Charity slams "hospital raid" by US troops

       A Swedish charity levelled accusations yesterday at US troops that it said stormed through a hospital in central Afghanistan, breaking down doors and tying up staff in a search for militants. The US military said it was investigating.
       The allegation that soldiers violated the neutrality of a medical facility follows the reported deaths of Afghan civilians in a US airstrike in the country's north last week. An Afghan human rights group said yesterday the strike on two hijacked fuel tankers last week may have killed as many as 70 civilians in Kunduz province.
       The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan said yesterday that the US Army's 10th Mountain Division entered the charity's hospital without permission to look for insurgents in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul.
       "This is simply not acceptable," said Anders Fange, the charity's country director, adding that the troops came to the hospital looking for Taliban insurgents late at night last Wednesday.
       Mr Fange said they kicked in doors,tied up four hospital employees and two family members of patients, and forced patients out of beds during the search. When they left two hours later,the unit ordered hospital staff to inform coalition forces if any wounded militants were admitted, and the military would decide if they could be treated,Mr Fange said.
       The staff refused, he said."That would put our staff at risk and make the hospital a target."
       The charity said on its website that the troops' actions were not only a violation of humanitarian principles but also went against an agreement between Nato forces and charities working in the area.
       "We demand guarantees ... that such violations will not be repeated and that this is made clear to commanders in the field," the statement said.
       A US military spokeswoman confirmed that the hospital was searched last week. She said the military was looking into the incident.
       "We take allegations like this seriously," she said.
       Meanwhile, the New York Times reported on Sunday that Afghans loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites for last month's elections, where no one voted but hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president's re-election,.
       Citing unnamed senior Western and Afghan officials, the newspaper said there were as many as 800 such fake sites that existed only on paper.
       Local workers reported that hundreds, and in some cases thousands,of votes for Mr Karzai came from each of those places, the report said.
       "We think that about 15% of the polling sites never opened on election day," a senior Western diplomat told the Times ."But they still managed to report thousands of ballots for Karzai."
       Karzai supporters also took over around 800 legitimate polling centres and used them to fraudulently report tens of thousands of additional ballots for the president, the report said. The result is that in some provinces, the number of ballots cast for Mr Karzai may exceed the people who actually voted by a factor of 10.
       In Berlin on Sunday, Britain, France and Germany unveiled proposals for an international conference on Afghanistan later this year in order to press Afghans to take more responsibility for their own country.
       "What is important, and this is our joint view, is to apply pressure in order to find a way to get the Afghans to appreciate that they have to take responsibility step by step," Chancellor Angela Merkel told a joint press briefing with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
       The location of the conference has yet to be decided.