WASHINGTON: The United States has admitted that 10 civilians were killed in a drone strike in Kabul.
According to the International News Agency, this confession has been made by the US Central Command. A top general admitted the United States had made a ‘mistake’ when it launched a drone strike against suspected ISIS terrorists in Kabul, killing 10 civilians including children instead during the frenzied final days of the US pullout from Afghanistan last month.
The strike, a macabre coda to the 20-year US war in Afghanistan, was meant to target a suspected IS operation that US intelligence had ‘reasonable certainty’ aimed to attack the Kabul airport, said US Central Command commander General Kenneth McKenzie.
“The strike was a tragic mistake,” McKenzie told reporters after an investigation. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin apologized to the relatives of those killed in a statement.
According to the news agency, the head of US Central Command, General McKenzie, has admitted that ISIS was targeted in the drone attack, but 10 civilians were killed by mistake. The head of US Central Command, General Mackenzie, has said that the drone strike in Kabul was a ‘big mistake’ and apologized for it.
The general said that on August 29 US forces had tracked a white Toyota for eight hours after seeing it at a site in Kabul that intelligence had identified as a location from which Islamic State operatives were believed to be preparing attacks on the Kabul airport.
More than 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians have died directly from the war launched by the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks, with casualties rising dramatically after then-president Donald Trump relaxed rules of engagement in 2017, according to a Brown University study in April.
