Seven children killed after air strike on school in Afghanistan

Massive battles were reported to have killed more than 100 people in southern Afghanistan in the past three days, as officials revealed that seven children had died when their religious school was bombed by the United States-led coalition.

In the capital, police said they had detained a suspect in connection with the deadly bus bombing that killed at least 35 people on Sunday, most of them police trainers.

It also emerged that in an operation backed by Afghan troops on the same day, coalition jets targeted a compound that also contained a mosque and a madrassa, or Islamic school, in the Zarghun Shah district of eastern Paktika province. Coalition forces claimed that "nefarious activity was occurring at the site". The statement gave no indication what such nefarious activity might be, however, a military spokesman later claimed that al-Qa'ida had been using the mosque and civilians to hide behind - a claim for which no evidence was provided. At least seven children were killed.

"We are saddened by the innocent lives that were lost as a result of militants' cowardice," said the spokesman, Major Chris Belcher. He said that troops had "surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications there were children inside the building". Another spokesman, Sgt Dean Welch, added: "If we knew that there were children inside the building, there was no way that that air strike would have occurred."

The United Nations Mission in Afghanistan said it had sent a team with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission to investigate the incident.

Other violence around the country made Sunday one of the bloodiest days since the Taliban were driven from power in 2001.

Afghan officials said yesterday that precise figures of the death toll from the fighting in the south were hard to determine because the fighting was ongoing. Regional authorities indicated that the death toll could be more than 100.

Mullah Ahmidullah Khan, the head of Uruzgan's provincial council, said clashes in the Chora district had killed 60 civilians, 70 suspected Taliban militants and 16 Afghan police. Meanwhile an official close to the Uruzgan governor, who asked not to be identified, told reporters that up to 75 civilians had been killed or wounded, while more than 100 Taliban and more than 35 police had been killed. Lt-Col Maria Carl, a spokeswoman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force, said: "[There] is definitely a large engagement that has been going on there."

Dr Hajed Noor, a doctor at Uruzgan's main hospital in the provincial capital, Tirin Kot, said 34 people wounded had been brought to the hospital, including nine women and seven children. Another doctor, Mohammad Fahim, told the Associated Press: "Most of the people who were killed are still there. They are not bringing the bodies here, so that is why we do not know how many have been killed."

The deaths come just days after the International Committee of the Red Cross urged warring factions to do more to avoid civilian deaths.