The New York Times reported on January 19 that the newspaper obtained newly declassified military drone footage. The release shows for the first time the U.S. strike on a car at a family home in Kabul in 2021 that killed ten Afghan civilians.
The videos are the first to be released publicly, showing the minutes before, during, and after the strike. Footage from two drones shows what appears to be a blurry figure in white next to a taller figure in black inside the courtyard as the car is backing in.
Shuddering on the other drone’s footage suggests that might be the time when it launched a missile. A Pentagon official described blurry images of at least one child about two minutes before the rocket was launched.
A lawyer for the victims’ families says the video shows the “painful, devastating loss of 10 deeply beloved people.”
A Pentagon spokesman says the strike was intended for what was believed to be an imminent threat to U.S. troops. But he says that none of the family members killed are now believed to have been connected to ISIS-K or threats to troops.
The videos show drone operators may have mistakenly assumed the driver of a car they were tracking was an ISIS-K member, The New York Times said.
Under the law of war, it can be legal to carry out strikes that kill some civilians, as long as they were not intended targets and are deemed necessary and proportionate to the military aim.
The Pentagon has offered to make unspecified condolence payments to the families of those killed in the strike.
News of the accidental killing first surfaced in August of 2021. Shortly after that, The U.S. military admitted that it killed ten civilians and not Islamic State bomb plotters, as it initially claimed, The New York Post reported.
According to the Post, Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., commander of U.S. Central Command, said the civilians “were tragically killed” on August 29, one day before the Biden administration evacuation flights from Kabul.
“I am now convinced that as many as ten civilians, including up to seven children, were tragically killed in that strike,” McKenzie said at a press conference.
