WASHINGTON – The United States (US) military admitted on yesterday that a US drone strike late last month in Kabul of Afghanistan killed as many as 10 civilians, including seven children, Xinhua news agency reported.
“Having thoroughly reviewed the findings of the investigation and the supporting analysis by interagency partners, I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, were tragically killed in that strike,” Kenneth McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, told reporters during a Pentagon press briefing.
“We now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with Daesh-Khorasan, or were a direct threat to US forces,” he added.
The general admitted the deadly strike was “a tragic mistake”. “As the combatant commander, I am fully responsible for this strike and this tragic outcome.”
The US Central Command said on August 29 that it launched a drone strike on a vehicle in Kabul, which it claimed had eliminated an “imminent” threat, posed by Daesh-Khorasan, an Afghanistan-based offshoot of the Islamic state, to the Hamid Karzai International Airport, where evacuations of US service members and personnel were underway.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley had called it a “righteous strike” with procedures correctly followed.
Media reports later emerged that the US military might have hit a wrong target in the strike with civilian casualties.
Separate investigations by The New York Times and The Washington Post identified the vehicle driver as Zemarai Ahmadi, a 43-year-old electrical engineer working for Nutrition and Education International, a US aid group based in Pasadena, California.
“We now know that there was no connection between Ahmadi and Daesh-Khorasan,” Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said in a statement yesterday.
“His activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed.”
“We apologise, and we will endeavour to learn from this horrible mistake,” he added.
The Pentagon chief also noted he had asked a further review of the investigation just completed by US Central Command to determine whether “accountability measures” need to be taken and strike authorities and procedures to be changed in the future. – Bernama, September 18, 2021
