Marines’ Actions in Afghanistan Called Excessive
By CARLOTTA GALL
New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan, April 14 — American marines reacted to a bomb ambush with excessive force in eastern Afghanistan last month, hitting groups of bystanders and vehicles with machine-gun fire in a series of attacks that covered 10 miles of highway and left 12 civilians dead, including an infant and three elderly men, according to a report published by an Afghan human rights commission on Saturday.
Families of the victims described in interviews this week the painful toll of the attacks, which took place on March 4 in Nangarhar Province. One victim, a 16-year-old newly married girl, was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to her family’s farmhouse, according to her family and the report. A 75-year-old man walking to his shop was hit by so many bullets that his son said he did not recognize the body when he came to the scene.
In the weeks immediately after the episode, the United States military began an investigation, and it is now exploring possible criminal charges, senior military officials said. The marines involved in the episode are being kept in Afghanistan, but the rest of their 120-man company has been pulled out of the country.
An American spokesman in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. David A. Accetta, said Saturday that the military was in the final stages of approving condolence payments for families of the wounded and dead in the shootings.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan, April 14 — American marines reacted to a bomb ambush with excessive force in eastern Afghanistan last month, hitting groups of bystanders and vehicles with machine-gun fire in a series of attacks that covered 10 miles of highway and left 12 civilians dead, including an infant and three elderly men, according to a report published by an Afghan human rights commission on Saturday.
Families of the victims described in interviews this week the painful toll of the attacks, which took place on March 4 in Nangarhar Province. One victim, a 16-year-old newly married girl, was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to her family’s farmhouse, according to her family and the report. A 75-year-old man walking to his shop was hit by so many bullets that his son said he did not recognize the body when he came to the scene.
In the weeks immediately after the episode, the United States military began an investigation, and it is now exploring possible criminal charges, senior military officials said. The marines involved in the episode are being kept in Afghanistan, but the rest of their 120-man company has been pulled out of the country.
An American spokesman in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. David A. Accetta, said Saturday that the military was in the final stages of approving condolence payments for families of the wounded and dead in the shootings.
(Continued here.)
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