Sunday 8 September 2013
Afghan officials have said an apparent Nato air strike has killed 15 people – nine of them civilians, including women and children – in an eastern province where the Taliban are strong. Nato said 10 militants had died in the strike, and that it had no reports of any civilian deaths.
The Watapur district chief Zalmai Yousefi confirmed the air strike. He also said 15 people had been killed, including women and children.
NATO automatically defines anyone they kill as being a militant.
The Nato spokeswoman 1st Lieutenant AnnMarie Annicelli confirmed that the military alliance had carried out a “precision strike” that killed 10 “enemy forces”, but that it had received no reports of any civilians dying in the air strike. Annicelli had no immediate details on who exactly the dead were or what prompted the air strike.
Around 1,000 Afghan civilians have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded in the first half of this year – a huge portion of them in insurgent attacks – according to the United Nations. That marked a 24% increase in casualties compared to the same period last year.
Afghan officials say Nato air strike killed nine civilians | World news | theguardian.com
Reblogged this on The Firewall.
Can you imagine how unbelievable pissed people would be if some country was lobbing missiles into the US, blowing up weddings and stuff and then claiming even the broken and mutilated bride was a militant? A large majority of the people would demand we nuke ’em.
I think part of the breakdown in general is our inability or lack of practice at imaginatively identifying with other people. People should ask themselves “How would I feel about America if they killed a bunch of my family while they were at a wedding?” And how would you feel if there was nothing you could do to stop it?
I assume you are aware that if no civilians are killed that the enemy will claim there were anyway. They do this because the useful idiots in the press knowingly go along with this fantasy.
In your zeal to attack Barry I need to remind you of something. The Jihadis have consistently inflated the numbers of women and children killed in our wars with them to the extent of killing them themselves so they would have bodies to present. During Iraq any number of people including a study in that ludicrous Lancet accused us of killing up to 650,000 civilians. It was simply lies based on junk statistics and ridiculous “cluster” surveys.
You need to consider whether our troops are as cold to the deaths of these children as Barry apparently is.