Nato ‘covered up’ botched night raid in Afghanistan that killed five (incl 2 pregnant women)

[kpete]

March 13, 2010
Nato ‘covered up’ botched night raid in Afghanistan that killed five
Jerome Starkey, Khataba

Haji Sharabuddin holds up a photo of his sons, one a police commander, the other an attorney, who were among five people killed during a joint US-Afghan night raid in Paktia province
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A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times.

The operation on Friday, February 12, was a botched pre-dawn assault on a policeman’s home a few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan. In a statement after the raid titled “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery”, Nato claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room.

A Times investigation suggests that Nato’s claims are either wilfully false or, at best, misleading. More than a dozen survivors, officials, police chiefs and a religious leader interviewed at and around the scene of the attack maintain that the perpetrators were US and Afghan gunmen. The identity and status of the soldiers is unknown.

The raid came more than a fortnight after the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan issued new guidelines designed to limit the use of night raids. Special forces and Western intelligence agencies that run covert operations in Afghanistan have been criticised for night raids based on dubious or false intelligence leading to civilian casualties.

more:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7060395.ece

[Robb]

1. I think we've been over this one.

Here, but more notably there. Starkey should have known better.