The Pentagon has admitted this Friday the “tragic mistake” of a drone attack that killed ten civilians in Kabul, acknowledging that it misinterpreted information about a vehicle that it considered was an “imminent threat” from the Islamic State-K (ISIS-K) , the terrorist group that three days earlier had attacked the Kabul airport during the evacuation operation, killing 200 people, including 13 US soldiers.
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In retaliation for the bloody attack, and fearing new “credible and imminent” threats, a drone bombed a van in the courtyard of a family home in a neighborhood near the airport. Ten people were killed, including seven minors and the suspected suspect, an Afghan civilian who was collaborating with an American NGO in the distribution of food to refugees around Kabul. This was reported by various international media, with interviews with relatives of the victims. The Pentagon then assured that the event was being investigated.
Faced with the continued silence of the Pentagon, for almost two weeks, the newspaper The New York Times published this week a demonstration that the victims had been a family and not the alleged vehicle loaded with explosives that, theoretically, would go to the airport with the intention of attacking again. The panic unleashed by the suicide attack on the 26th, as well as the difficulties of the evacuation operation – which removed 124,000 from Kabul in just two weeks – did not help to clarify what happened.
“Now I am convinced that ten civilians, including seven minors, died as a result of this attack,” said General Frank McKenzie, head of the US Central Command, who was responsible for the investigation. “Furthermore, we found that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died had ties to ISIS-K or posed a direct threat to US forces. So our investigation concludes that the attack was a tragic mistake, “McKenzie told reporters.
The soldier, who declared himself “ultimately responsible for the attack and its tragic result,” conveyed his condolences to the victims’ families. “This attack was decided with the conviction that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces in the evacuation of the airport, but it was a mistake and I offer my sincere apologies.”
The attack on the Kabul neighborhood was the second punishment operation launched by the US after suffering 13 fatalities in the airport bombing. Two days before the drone killed the ten civilians, members of the same family, another such attack neutralized an ISIS-K base of operations on the Afghan border with Iran, killing two militants and wounding one.
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