WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – As the U.S. military launched a drone strike on August 29 to stop a vehicle believed to be carrying explosives meant for Hamid Karzai International Airport, where U.S. troops were leading the evacuation effort, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) issued an urgent alert that civilians were likely in the area, according to three sources cited by CNN.
The warning that there were possibly children in the vicinity of the targeted white Toyota sedan had come seconds before the missile hit the car. Ten civilians, including seven children, the youngest of whom was 2 years old, died in the strike as the car was pulling into the family’s driveway.
The airstrikes had been ordered by the U.S. military in the aftermath of the deadly terrorist attacks by Daesh that targeted crowds of civilians as well as U.S. and Taliban soldiers outside Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 26. The bombings left nearly 200 people dead and thousands injured.
Relatives of and Afghan family wiped out in the U.S. drone strike are demanding justice from international institutions as well as a face-to-face apology from American officials.
The Pentagon kept insisting for over two weeks that the August 29 strike was warranted and necessary to prevent an attack on American troops in the wake of a bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. military servicemen and as many as 170 Afghan civilians.
Ezmarai Ahmadi was wrongly identified as a Daesh-K terrorist by U.S. intelligence, which tracked his vehicle for eight hours before targeting the car with a missile fired from a Reaper drone. Ahmadi was a civilian who, ironically, worked for a California-based aid organization in Afghanistan.
That attack resulted in ten civilian deaths. Seven of them were children.
On Friday, a top U.S. general finally admitted the attack was an error, and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin apologized to the relatives of those killed.
The survivors of the attack and grieving relatives of the victims, however, say an apology is not enough.
“No one (has contacted) with us to apologize,” said Emal Ahmadi, the brother of Ezmarai Ahmadi.
“I lost ten members of our family and the U.S. should pay,” added Emal, who lost his toddler, Malika, to the U.S. strike. “We demand justice from international institutions... Then we want compensation.”
Another relative of the victims, Farshad Haidari, told AFP, “They must come here and apologize to us face-to-face.”
The U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 removed the Taliban from power, but it worsened the security situation in the country. Two decades later, the Taliban have returned to power again.