AFP

THE American army delivered an apology and blood money on Tuesday May 8th to the families of 19 Afghan civilians killed in March by marines. As in similar cases in Afghanistan and Iraq the killings, which took place on a road near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, were discovered by journalists and initially misrepresented by American commanders. Announcing the climb-down, an American colonel in Afghanistan told reporters: “I stand before you today deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry that Americans have killed and wounded innocent Afghan people.”

This is unlikely to prevent many more such incidents. The killing of large numbers of civilians by American forces, through indisciplined firing or as a result of their heavy reliance on air-strikes, has been a bitter feature of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq—just as it was in Vietnam. Indeed, later on Tuesday at least 21 civilians were killed in air-strikes in the southern province of Helmand, according to Asadullah Wafa, its pro-American governor. In Iraq on Wednesday, according to local security sources, an American helicopter involved in an attack against suspected insurgents killed a number of children at a primary school north of Baghdad.

Since the killings in Afghanistan in March, American troops in that country—mostly from a counter-terrorism contingent that is operating outside the main American-led NATO peacekeeping force—are alleged to have killed civilians on at least five occasions. Late in April at least 57 civilians are said to have been slain in American air-strikes at Shindand, in western Afghanistan.

The slaughter in Jalalabad appears to have occurred in similar circumstances to the better-known murder in 2005 of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, in western Iraq. After being attacked by a suicide bomber, American marine special forces allegedly retaliated by shooting at every Afghan in sight. Another 50 civilians were wounded in their attack. As in Haditha, the marines then tried hiding their bloody tracks.

Afghan journalists at the scene had video film confiscated and digital photographs deleted from their cameras. American officials claimed that the marines had faced a “complex ambush”, with Taliban marksmen hidden among the civilians. The Taliban are capable of such tactics. Before last week's violence in Shindand, a tally by the Associated Press showed 151 civilians had been killed in Afghanistan this year, including 100 by the Taliban. Another estimate, by Human Rights Watch, suggests that more than 1,000 Afghan civilians died in violent attacks in 2006, more than half of them the victims of Taliban assaults.

Yet there appears to be no evidence that the marines near Jalalabad came under attack after the bomb-blast. America's Department of Defence has launched a criminal investigation into the incident. The family of each slain Afghan has received $2,000.

More such payouts could soon follow. The fighting in Shindand, between April 27th and 29th, began with a failed American special forces operation to grab a local warlord and suspected Taliban ally, Mullah Akhtar. A former Taliban commander, he had previously received support from the Afghan government (and allegedly from American forces) against another warlord, Ismael Khan. In the attempt to capture him, according to an American army press release, 136 Taliban fighters and one American soldier were killed, but no civilians.

A team of UN and government investigators sent to Shindand last week found several hundred houses destroyed by air-strikes and heard reports of many civilians dead and injured. Some 1,600 families had fled the area. Among the dead were said to be many children, including some who had drowned after diving into a river to escape the onslaught.

In response to early reports of a massacre in Shindand, Afghanistan's leader, Hamid Karzai, warned that Afghans' patience with the foreign troops in their midst was “wearing thin”. Mr Karzai has issued similar warnings after previous American atrocities. But there is evidence to suggest that he may be right. Last week several hundred students gathered near Jalalabad to protest against a separate, recent incident in which civilians, including at least one woman, were alleged to have been killed by American special-forces fighters. In their slogans they held George Bush and Mr Karzai himself to blame.