General Davis Petraeus today announced that the US is “deeply sorry” for yesterday’s air strike in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan, a strike which killed nine children who were collecting firewood.

“These deaths should never have happened,” Petraeus insisted in the wake of angry condemnation from President Hamid Karzai and public protests on the streets of the Kunar Province, where there was already anger about a NATO offensive which killed 65 other civilians last month.

Reports say that several hundred protesters from nearby villages flocked to the capital of the province, chanting “death to America” and insisting apologies were simply not good enough any more, after nearly 10 years of NATO offensives.

But today’s apology was more than the victims of the previous offensive got, which was allegations by Gen. Petraeus that parents were deliberately burning their children to make NATO look bad and accusations that the locals were distributing “Taliban propaganda.”