“I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed,” US Central Command Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. said at a briefing at the Pentagon Friday afternoon. "It was a mistake and I offer my sincere apology."
McKenzie added that the US was exploring the possibility of payments to compensate the families of the victims.
The 29th August 2021 drone strike came in response to a bombing at the Kabul airport that had killed 13 US service members as evacuations continued in the waning days of the US withdrawal from the country.
A Hellfire missile launched from the US drone killed 10 people in a Kabul neighborhood, with officials saying they were targeting an ISIS-K terrorist who was planning to use a car packed with explosives in a suicide attack.
The official military statement at the time said the US had “conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International airport.”
“We are confident we successfully hit the target,” said Capt. Bill Urban, the US Central Command spokesman. “Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material. We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time.”
There were almost immediate reports of civilian casualties, but on 1st September 2021, Gen. Mark Milley — the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — defended the bombing as “righteous” and “still valid.”
“At the time — and I think this is still valid — we had very good intelligence that ISIS-K was preparing a specific type of vehicle at a specific type of location,” Milley said. “We monitored that through various means and all of the engagement criteria were being met. We went through the same level of rigor that we’ve done for years, and we took a strike.”
On 10th September, both the Washington Post and New York Times published stories calling the official account into question, with analyses finding no evidence of explosive materials in the car that belonged to the Nutrition and Education International, a US charity. The driver was Zemari Ahmadi, an electrical engineer who was a long-time employee of the aid group. Officials had said they did not know Ahmadi’s identity at the time of the strike but had deemed him suspicious.
"On behalf of the men and women of the Department of Defense, I offer my deepest condolences to surviving family members of those who were killed, including Ahmadi, and to the staff of Nutrition and Education International, Ahmadi’s employer," Lloyd Austin, secretary Defense, said in a statement.
"We now know that there was no connection between Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan, that 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."
Earlier, an analysis by Brown University earlier this year estimated that more than 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians had been killed in the US-led War in Afghanistan between its start in October 2001 and April 2021. The war ended on 30th August 2021 when the final US troops left the country.
