Washington: US forces failed to follow procedures in carrying out deadly air strikes last month in western Afghanistan in an incident that killed dozens of civilians, the Pentagon said on Monday.
“There were some problems with tactics, techniques and procedures, the way in which close air support was supposed to have been executed in this case,” press secretary Geoff Morrell told a news conference.
Morrell cited the conclusions of a military investigation into US bombing raids in the May 4 incident in western Farah province, which the Kabul government says claimed 140 civilian lives.
The probe found that a B-1 bomber involved in the incident lost contact with its intended target temporarily, Morrell said.
“That plane, because of how it takes its bombing routes, had to break away from positive identification of their target at one point to make its elongated approach,” he said.
The finding on the B-1 aircraft was “the fundamental complaint that was rendered I believe from this investigation.”
But Morrell said it was unclear if the failure to follow certain procedures resulted in civilian deaths.
“It was just noted as one of the problems associated with these events, not that it was the cause of the civilian casualties,” he said.
The investigation was “exhaustive” and it shows “the guys on the ground who are involved in this incident took great pains to limit civilian casualties, to target those who had attacked them,” he said.
While Kabul officials put the civilian toll at 140, an earlier probe by the US military in Afghanistan found that 20-30 civilians were killed along with 60-65 insurgents. And Afghanistan’s top rights body has said 97 civilians, most of them children, were believed to have died.
Morrell did not say how many civilians were estimated to have been killed in the air strikes.
He said the latest probe found “the numbers in terms of Taliban killed and civilians who perished in this attack are very similar to those that the Afghan — some of the Afghan defense officials believe are accurate.”
The probe was carried out by Brigadier General Raymond Thomas and was presented to Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier Monday in an hour-long briefing, Morrell said.
The report, details of which were leaked to the media earlier, marked the most direct admission so far from the US military that it had made mistakes in the clash with Taliban forces, which triggered an angry public reaction in Afghanistan.
Civilian casualties — often from US air power — have caused growing outrage in Afghanistan and tensions with the Kabul government, with US and Western officials worried about handing propaganda victories to the Taliban.
The officer chosen to lead US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, warned at a congressional hearing last week that the war against insurgents could be lost unless civilian casualties were reduced.
The May 4 incident began after insurgents attacked police checkpoints and local police called for help from Afghan and international security forces. Fighting then raged for several hours as US air power was called in.
Air bombardments began on two villages in the evening but there were conflicting reports about whether the insurgents were even present at the time, according to Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission.
