(Washington) The US drone strike that killed ten Afghan civilians, including seven children, in Kabul on August 29 was a tragic mistake, but it did not violate the laws of war, the Pentagon said on Wednesday after an investigation internal.
“The investigation did not identify any violations of the law, including the law of war,” Lt. Gen. Sami Said, an official at the Defense Ministry, said in a report.
“Execution errors combined with confirmation bias and communication breakdowns resulted in regrettable civilian casualties,” he added.
In front of the Pentagon press, Lieutenant-General Said insisted that this was “mistake”, not “criminal, random or negligent” behavior.
Those involved “believed at the time that they were targeting an imminent threat,” three days after an attack by the local branch of the Islamic State, IS-K, which killed 13 American soldiers and around 100 ‘Afghans near Kabul airport,’ he said in his report.
The strike was carried out in the midst of the chaotic withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan. On August 29, the US military destroyed a white Toyota Corolla vehicle, claiming it was “loaded with explosives” and claiming to have foiled an IS-K attempt.
But the family of the driver of the vehicle, Ezmarai Ahmadi, reported that he was employed by an NGO and that ten people, including seven children, were killed.
US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin had offered his “sincere condolences” and “apologies” for this blunder.
“The intended target of the strike – the vehicle, its contents and its occupant – was in good faith assessed at the time as an imminent threat to US forces,” according to the investigative report.
This assessment “was unfortunately inaccurate”, according to the text.
But “the threats to the American forces at the airport were very high at the time,” he explains.
Lieutenant-General Said explained that the US military had information on an imminent IS-K attack, and more specifically on a white Toyota Corolla containing explosives of the type used three days earlier.
But the US military followed the wrong car. “In fact, we never followed the good Toyota Corolla,” he admitted.
In addition, the military believed that the building next to which the strike was carried out was empty. None of those responsible for analyzing the satellite images noticed a child entering the surveillance zone two minutes before the strike.
Finally, the US military came to the conclusion that the deadly attack of August 26 was carried out with a bomb hidden in a computer bag.
When they saw two men exchange a computer bag three days later, they immediately thought the men they were following were IS-K. “In fact, it was just a simple computer bag. ”
They were victims, according to the military official, of “confirmation bias”, the tendency to draw conclusions consistent with what one thinks probable.
In particular, the report recommends reviewing the procedures preceding the strikes to assess the presence of civilians.
During the investigation carried out by Lieutenant-General Said, 29 people, including 22 “directly involved in the strike”, were questioned under oath.