Afghan anger about the killing and maiming of ordinary Afghans in military action on insurgents peaked last month with air strikes that Kabul says killed 140 villagers. The US military admits at least 26 were killed.

General Stanley McChrystal will issue in the next few days a directive that tells commanders to "work their way through" scenarios that could harm civilians through use of air support, Rear Admiral Gregory Smith said.

"We are not telling our forces to walk away or back up, especially if our forces are in jeopardy," he told AFP.

"But in instances when our forces can make the decision to de-escalate (a situation), they have an opportunity to more deliberately work their way through the problem," he said.

An example could be deciding not to attack insurgents in a building when it was not certain who was inside, Smith said.

If they were not in immediate danger, the troops could choose to hold back and call in aerial surveillance of the area, or put in more ground forces or work with the villagers against their targets, he said.

"You are not just focusing on how to kill the enemy but how to protect the population," he said.

"Our forces will not be asked to take any more risk and we are not saying that the enemy is going to get a free pass," he said.

Instead troops would have to find means to carry out their operations in ways that would not jeopardise local populations.

"This new tactical directive will be issued probably in the next days," Smith said.

Commanders would have to educate their troops all the way down to the last soldier about the new tactical directive, an unclassified version of which may also be released, he said.

Years of concern about civilian casualties by foreign troops in the escalating conflict peaked in May when US planes bombed compounds to target Taliban militants in the southwestern province of Farah but killed civilians.

The Afghan government said 140 villagers, many of them children, were killed inside the buildings, making it the worst incident of civilian casualties since the US-led invasion that removed the Taliban government in late 2001.

The US military issued a far lower death toll but admitted that some mistakes were made.

Critics warn that harming civilians threatens the international effort in Afghanistan, amounting to a recruiting tool for the insurgents.

McChrystal, who took command of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan a week ago, told AFP Monday that in many cases the insurgents used villagers as human shields.

They deliberately tried to attract military fire for the propaganda value of civilian casualties, he said.

The commander said he wanted to increase the capability to "watch the battlefield" using different kinds of reconnaissance aircraft so the military could realise when it was being drawn into such a case.

This would mean the troops would not be "tricked in responding with too much fire power and in fact hurt the people we are trying to protect".

"Air power contains the seeds of our own destruction if we don't use it responsibly," The New York Times quoted McChrystal as telling a group of his senior officers during a video conference last week.

"We can lose this fight," he said.

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