Less than 24 hours after suicide bombers killed hundreds of Afghans and 13 brave U.S. troops, the Pentagon along with the Biden administration launched a drone strike outside of the city of Kabul.
Initially Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley stated that the drone strike was a “righteous strike” that killed an “imminent threat” that was a member of Isis K.
Many people didn’t believe the Pentagon’s quick response to the suicide blasts and started conducting investigations, the New York Times in particular did some investigative journalism and found out that the drone strike that the U.S. military launched killed an Afghan aide worker along with 10 other civilians, seven of which were children.
The aide worker Zemari Ahmadi had no ties to ISIS and even worked for a California NGO.
Well, now the U.S. Military is admitting their mistake and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie has offered his sincere apologies to all those who were impacted by the strike.
BREAKING: CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie admits Aug. 29th Kabul drone strike believed to be targeting ISIS-K extremists "was a mistake," killing "as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children." https://t.co/jnI1Ll47SN pic.twitter.com/RSP15lWOJJ
— ABC News (@ABC) September 17, 2021
BREAKING: Pentagon says "as many as 10 civilians, including up to 7 children" killed in Kabul drone strike that took place in August.
They were "unlikely" to be associated with ISIS-K, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie says. https://t.co/8meWlgrflj
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 17, 2021
NBC News shared These Details:
An Aug. 29 drone strike targeting terrorists in Afghanistan mistakenly killed innocent civilians, including children, Pentagon officials admitted Friday.
“We now assess it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K,” Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, said. “It was a mistake.”
He said he is “fully responsible for this strike and the tragic outcome.”
“I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed,” McKenzie said.
The strike was launched after last month’s deadly suicide bombing near Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. military members and scores of Afghan civilians, and was initially said to have prevented another attack.
Central Command opened a formal investigation — called a 15-6 — after reports that the drone’s Hellfire missile killed as many as 10 civilians, and had not prevented a terror strike, as U.S. officials initially claimed.
The 10 dead were all members of the same extended family, relatives told NBC News, and included the seven children. Some were as young as 2 and 3.
“They were 10 civilians,” one member of the family, Emal Ahmadi, said earlier this month. He said his toddler, Malika, was among those killed. “My daughter … she was 2 years old,” he said.
The targeted car was driven by Ahmadi’s cousin, Zemari Ahmadi, a technical engineer for a U.S. aid company.
A day before the Pentagon admitted to their mistakes, Senator Rand Paul grilled Sec. Blinken for his negligence regarding Afghanistan.
Take a look:
https://twitter.com/Maui_Speaks/status/1437846146030792707
Military.com covered the story too:
The Pentagon admitted Friday an airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 29 killed 10 civilians, including seven children, but not any terrorist planners as officials first claimed.
The strike was retaliation for a deadly suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops and Afghan civilians outside the Kabul airport days earlier during a massive military-led evacuation. Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chairman, had initially called it a “righteous” strike.
“It was a mistake, and I offer my sincere apology,” said Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, who oversaw the airstrike.
The U.S. Hellfire missile hit what the military said at the time was a suspected planner for the ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, terror group driving a white Toyota car that had been tracked by a U.S. military strike cell and up to six MQ-9 Reaper drones throughout the day, McKenzie said in a briefing to reporters Friday.
The driver had parked in a compound near the Kabul airport, where the Aug. 26 suicide bombing had caused the worst day of military casualties in a decade. Operations were still underway to get Americans and Afghans out of the country at the time of the drone strike.
But the man was actually an innocent civilian, and had been publicly identified in the weeks following the strike as an employee of a California-based aid group. The Pentagon had declined since the strike to provide the names of the alleged terrorists targeted.
If the New York Times didn’t discover the true facts behind the drone strike, the Pentagon would not have admitted to their mistakes today.
In the age of social media it’s hard for the Pentagon to cover up their lies anymore, just imagine what they did before the internet age.
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