Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com & CNN News Service – 2014-03-07 01:00:24
Friendly Fire: US Drone Strike
Kills Five Afghan Soldiers
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(March 6, 2014) — The Pentagon has confirmed launching a drone strike against the Logar Province of Afghanistan today, hitting their allies in a case of mistaken identity. The strike killed five Afghan National Army soldiers, and wounded eight others.
The provincial governor’s spokesman said that the attack was “the result of poor coordination between the people on the ground and the operators of the drone.” NATO has promised an investigation into the killings.
The soldiers were on a routine patrol in Charkh, which Afghan officials say is frequented by foreign insurgent fighters. Logar Province lies along the Pakistani frontier.
Other than confirming the incident, US officials would only say that they “value the strong relationship” they enjoy with the Afghan military. The US is pushing Afghanistan to sign a deal to keep occupation forces in Afghanistan “through 2024 and beyond.”
NATO Airstrike Kills at Least 5 Afghan Soldiers
CNN News Service
KABUL, Afghanistan (March 6, 2014) — Five Afghan soldiers were accidentally killed early today in a NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan, authorities said. Eight other members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) were wounded in the strike in Logar province, Gen. Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said in an emailed statement.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the deaths from one of its operations, describing them as an accident. “An investigation is being conducted at this time to determine the circumstances that led to this unfortunate incident,” ISAF said in a statement, expressing its condolences to the victims’ families.
The deaths come as NATO is preparing to withdraw the vast majority of its soldiers from Afghanistan by the end of the year. US President Barack Obama has warned his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, that the United States may pull out all of its troops if a new security deal isn’t signed.
US Drone Strike Kills Four in Yemen
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(March 5, 2014) — Another US drone strike, the fourth since Monday morning, was launched today against northern Yemen, destroying a vehicle in the Jawf Province and killed at least four people.
The Yemeni military has been unable to confirm any of the victims, but claimed one was Ali Juraym, a local who had once fought against US occupation forces in Iraq. The others were dubbed “al-Qaeda suspects.”
As with most claims of high profile militant leaders being slain, there is no record of Ali Juraym having been a militant of note anywhere in the past, or indeed any media mention of him at all before his death.
The increase in US strikes comes amid growing disquiet about the number of unidentified victims in their attacks, and indeed those times when the victims were identified, as with the December strike on a Yemen wedding, which killed 12 civilians.
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