Arab League chief Amr Moussa on Tuesday deplored human losses in the US-led war against terrorism in Afghanistan.
"The raids should avoid innocent civilians," Moussa was quoted as saying by the official Kuwaiti news agency (KUNA).
He reaffirmed the position of the Organization of Islamic conference (OIC), expressed recently in a Doha meeting, on the need to protect Afghan civilians.
Speaking on the Middle East peace process, Moussa cast doubt on the credibility of the newly-expressed European and US positions supporting Palestinian rights, saying they could not be serious as they were turning a blind eye to Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders.
More than 20 civilians, including an entire family, were killed in US raids on the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar overnight, a militia official said Wednesday.
Abdul Hanan Hemat, head of the Taliban's Bakhter information agency, was quoted by AFP as saying a family was wiped out in Choni district when the vehicle they were traveling in was bombed as they tried to escape the city.
"The whole family was martyred. The truck and their household belongings were all destroyed," he said, without giving details of the number of people in the family.
Hemat said another 12 people died in Choni and Low Wala areas during the attacks and eight died in Panjwaee district.
Some 25 people were injured in the same areas, which are understood to be near Taliban military bases.
Hemat said Tuesday that nine civilians had been killed when a bomb struck a residential area in Panjwaee and a further 15 people died in Choni village during earlier raids.
Two civilians were wounded Wednesday morning in the capital Kabul as US jets flew daylight raids over the city, Hemat said.
Other daylight attacks were made around the eastern city of Jalalabad, Taliban sources said.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has ridiculed the Taliban's claims that close to 400 civilians have died in the attacks, designed to force the Islamic militia to hand over alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden.
He has said all civilian casualties are regretted, but that only military facilities are targeted for attack.
Even so, two independent aid agencies have been bombed in Kabul since the air raids began on October 7: a demining agency linked to the United Nations, and a Red Cross warehouse containing blankets, shelter material and possibly food – Albawaba.com
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