us drone strike transparency discrepancies

“Were there others killed? Yes, there are others killed. In remarks following the strike, Milley conceded the US was aware of at least three deaths. A reporter who visited the following day saw blood splattered on interior walls and ceilings, and photographs provided by Ahmadi’s relatives of the burned bodies of the children.

The Times also spoke to neighbors and an Afghan health official who confirmed that children’s bodies were removed from the site. The relative said Ahmadi and a cousin both had open resettlement applications for the US for themselves and their families. “You say he was Isis, but he worked for the Americans.”

“All of them were innocent,” Emal, Ahmadi’s brother, told the Times. The 10 victims, the Times said, were all related to him, including three of his own children, aged between 10 and 20, and five other relatives aged two to seven. Photograph: Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/APĪhmadi, who had worked for NEI since 2006, lived at the compound with two of his brothers and their families. The Post quoted several experts who concluded that the damage captured in images of the aftermath of the strike were consistent only with the explosion of a single Hellfire missile from the drone and subsequent rupture of the car’s fuel tank.Įmal Ahmadi shows a photo of his family member who was killed during a US drone strike on their home in Kabul. The Washington Post also published its own investigation into the deadly US strike, which reached similar conclusions, including that there was no indication of a second, larger explosion at the residential compound that Milley suggested was evidence of explosives in the back of the Ahmadi’s car. We want to go there,” said the director, who was quoted anonymously because of the danger of being associated with a US company doing business in Afghanistan. “We have nothing to do with terrorism or Isis. His duties that day included dropping off colleagues at various places in Kabul, according to the director of NEI in Afghanistan interviewed by a Times reporter, and the “explosives” in the vehicle were water cartons that Ahmadi filled from a hose at his office and was taking home to his family. What the US military observers figured was Ahmadi acting suspiciously, the newspaper said, was him going about his normal business as a worker for the California-based aid group Nutrition and Education International. The action, Gen Mark Milley, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, insisted, was a “ righteous strike” against Isis-K members who had been observed at points during the day loading what a surveillance team thought to be explosives into the vehicle and visiting a known safe house of the terrorist group.īut the Times’ reporting, compiled from extensive video analysis, interviews with Ahmadi’s colleagues and family, and visits to the scene, casts considerable and potentially devastating doubt on that US official version of events. US military officials have insisted the targets of the 29 August operation were Islamic State suicide bombers plotting an attack on Kabul airport similar to that which killed 13 American troops helping with evacuations, and more than 170 others three days earlier.

Us drone strike transparency discrepancies