Kabul  - Two weeks after a NATO airstrike killed dozens of people in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, President Hamid Karzai on Thursday slammed the operation as "wrong."

"The operation was wrong. ... It should not have been conducted," Karzai said in his first public remarks about the incident, in which a German commander called for the airstrike on two fuel trucks hijacked by Taliban militants.

"It could have been done through other means," he added.

According to a commission set up by Karzai, 30 civilians and 69 insurgents were killed.

At the same time, Karzai defended Germany's engagement in the country, saying that the Afghan people knew very well that the Germans were a "friend of Afghanistan." (dpa)