A UN committee has expressed "alarm" over reports that hundreds of children have been killed by US military forces in Afghanistan in the past five years.
US forces in Afghanistan (USFOR-A), which leads the NATO fight against Taliban insurgents, dismissed the committee's concerns as "categorically unfounded".
The Geneva-based Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said the deaths were "due notably to reported lack of precautionary measures and indiscriminate use of force". It gave no precise statistics.
NATO forces had reduced civilian casualties by 49 percent in 2012 compared with 2011 and the number of children killed or wounded in air strikes had dropped by nearly 40 percent in the same period, said a statement from USFOR-A.
A UN report in April last year said 110 children were killed and 68 wounded in air strikes conducted by US-led NATO and Afghan forces in 2011.
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