At least 20 killed in apparent army strike day before Afghanistan takes full control of security at end of Nato combat operations

At least 20 people have been killed, most of them women and children, after Afghan soldiers misfired a rocket and hit a wedding party in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday evening.

The incident occurred on the day Nato ended its 13-year-long combat mission and transferred responsibility for the country’s security to the Afghan national forces.

According to a police spokesman, the incident happened after Taliban fighters attacked an Afghan army headquarters in Sangin, an embattled district in Helmand province where US and British troops were involved in years of fierce fighting. When the army retaliated, the insurgents hid out close to the wedding party, which a rocket then accidentally struck, the spokesman, Fareed Ahmad Obaid, said.

However, according to the local governor who visited the scene, eyewitnesses disagreed on events. Some villagers confirmed the police’s claims that it was the Taliban who initiated the clash by attacking an army outpost. Yet relatives of the dead denied that the Taliban had engaged in fighting, as did Qari Yusaf Ahmadi, a local Taliban spokesman.

The incident happened while guests were awaiting the arrival of the bride at the home of her cousin, Abdul Haleem, in the village of Bayam Zoi in Sarwankhala district.

The rocket hit a building where women and children were gathered. At least 45 wounded were transported by ambulance to Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital where the Italian organisation Emergency runs a surgical centre. Geicomo Menaldo, a senior hospital staff member, said every one of the victims they received were women and children. The death toll remained unclear last night, but at least 20 are known to have died.

Abdullah Jan, 12, told the Associated Press he still does not know where his mother is after being knocked unconscious while running to welcome the bride, and waking up hours later in the hospital.

“We were ready to go to sleep when my auntie came and said the bride had arrived. My mother went out to see the bride and I was running after her, toward the door when I heard the sound of a blast and some bright flash like a fire hit me,” Abdullah said. Both his legs were broken and he suffered burns to his belly.

“Then I couldn’t see anything. I heard people shouting and after that I didn’t know what happened. The next time I opened my eyes I was here,” he added.

The Afghan government has announced that it is launching an investigation into the incident. The head of the army in southern Helmand province, General Sultan Mahmoud, told the Associated Press that an early investigation indicated that the army had used artillery that travelled three kilometres, much longer than would have been necessary, had it wanted to target the Taliban’s outposts.

“We are seeing no evidence that the Taliban can fire from that distance, and as the Taliban positions were only one kilometre from the checkpoint,” Mahmoud told AP.

He added that the house seemed to have been attacked from two opposite directions, prompting questions about whether the house had been targeted deliberately.

On Sunday, at a ceremony in Kabul marking the end of Nato’s mission, General Hans-Lothar Domröse, a senior Nato official, commended the Afghan security forces for demonstrating “time and again their ability, willingness and confidence to defeat the enemy and provide a secure environment for the Afghan people”.

However, the tragedy on Wednesday is a poignant reminder that, although western leaders have hailed the military transition as the end of the war in Afghanistan, for Afghans, the conflict is far from over.

The Afghan security forces assume control at a time when war rages in many parts of the country. More than 3,000 civilians were killed in 2014, with the total number of casualties surpassing 10,000, according to a recent UN tally. That is a 19% jump from 2013, and makes 2014 the war’s bloodiest year on record for Afghan civilians. This year also saw an increase of 33% casualties among children, and 12% among women.

Whether the Afghan army and police will be able to secure peace in the country depends not only on their ability to suppress the insurgency, which has reignited particularly forcefully in Helmand. They also need to gain the trust of the Afghan people. While insurgents are responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths, stories of abuse and corruption have marred the reputation of government forces.

Sangin district has remained a hotly contested area since the early days of the war. During the past year, insurgents have challenged the government’s security to the point where some fear the district might fall completely to the Taliban.

The area where the wedding attack occurred is one of many Taliban strongholds in the district. At the moment, the army’s front line against the insurgents is barely 300 metres from its headquarters, according to Helmand’s provincial governor, Mohammad Naim Baloch. The provincial security forces are unable to clear the area, he said. He has asked the central government in Kabul and the country’s intelligence services for air support and engineers to detect improvised explosive devices. “So far we have received nothing,” he said.

During the past year, Afghan forces have asked Nato for air support approximately 400 times, according to Brian Tribus, the director of public affairs for Nato in Kabul. Only 7% of the requests were met.

Under its new mission, Resolute Support, the remaining 18,000 US and Nato forces will primarily train, advise and assist the 350,000-strong national forces. Roughly 5,000 of the American soldiers will retain a limited fighting role to conduct force protection and counterterrorism. But they will only be able to directly assist Afghan forces in what is termed “extreme circumstances”.

With the unstable security situation, uncertainty keeps growing as newly elected president Ashraf Ghani and his chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, struggle to form a cabinet.

As a November deadline for ministerial appointments came and went, the prolonged election crisis seems set to bleed into the government’s first term. The political tussle is thought to be particularly over the bodies concerned with security: the ministry of defence, ministry of interior, as well as top posts in the intelligence agency National Directorate of Security.