Drone attack in Kabul killed civilians, confesses America

Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, had called it a “righteous” strike.

The US military on Friday admitted that the drone strike it had carried out in Kabul on August 29 was a “tragic mistake”, and all 10 persons killed were civilians - including seven children - and not one of them had anything to do with the terror group Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) as had been claimed earlier.

Afghan residents and family members of the victims gather next to a damaged vehicle inside a house, day after a US drone airstrike in Kabul on August 30. (AFP)

The admission was a glaring reversal of the Pentagon’s earlier description of the drone attack, which was touted as a successful operation that presaged the “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism capability that US President Joe Biden said America will have in Afghanistan after the troop pull-out.

Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, had called it a “righteous” strike. Turns out, as The New York Times summed it up, “Almost everything senior defence officials asserted in the hours, and then days, and then weeks after the August 29 drone strike turned out to be false.”

“Sorry” is not enough for the survivors of the deadly drone strike. Emal Ahmadi, whose three-year-old daughter Malika was killed on August 29, when the US hellfire missile struck his elder brother’s car, told AP on Saturday the family demands Washington to investigate who fired the drone and punish those responsible for the attack.

On Friday, General Kenneth F McKenzie Jr, commander of the US Central Command that carried out the drone strike, said at a press meet, “Our investigation now concludes that the strike was a tragic mistake. This strike certainly did not come up to our standards, and I profoundly regret it.”

He said the US was considering ex-gratia payments to the victims and, going forward, strikes in Afghanistan “will be under a higher standard”.

2 die in Jalalabad blasts

Two people were killed when three blasts struck Jalalabad on Saturday, one of which targeted a Taliban vehicle, in the country’s first deadly attack since the United States withdrew.

“In one attack, a Taliban vehicle patrolling in Jalalabad was targeted,” a Taliban official who asked not to be named told AFP. “Women and children were among the injured.”

An official from the health department in Nangarhar told AFP three people, not two, died and 18 were wounded, contradicting local media reports that said the attacks left two dead.

Photos taken at the site of the blast showed a green pick-up truck with a white Taliban flag surrounded by debris as armed fighters looked on. Jalalabad is in Nangarhar, heartland of the IS group’s Afghanistan branch.

(With inputs from agencies)