April 11, 2010

ROME - The head of Italian aid group Emergency denounced the detentions of three of its hospital workers in Afghanistan and said Sunday the group was targeted because the hospital treats Taliban fighters along with civilians.

Emergency founder Gino Strada said 40 per cent of the people treated at his hospital in Helmand province are children, a sign that NATO forces are harming civilians in the effort to dislodge the Taliban.

"It becomes difficult (for international forces) to say that dangerous terrorists were bombed," he told Sky TG24. "Children were bombed."

Strada charged that a "preventive war" had been launched by Afghan and international forces "to remove an uncomfortable witness before launching a military offensive in the region."

Three Italian Emergency workers were detained Saturday as part of an investigation into an alleged plot to kill the governor of Helmand province, Afghan officials said. They were among nine people held after suicide bomb vests, hand grenades, pistols and explosives were discovered in the storeroom of an Emergency hospital in Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah.

Emergency has denied involvement.

Emergency has had a tense relationship with local authorities in violence-wracked Helmand, due in part to its policy of treating all patients. Emergency has provided health services in Afghanistan since 1999