WASHINGTON (News Desk) – Saying that no disciplinary measures will be made against the personnel of US special operations forces involved in 2010’s notorious raid which killed seven civilians including two pregnant Afghan women, an internal Defense Department inquiry has concluded that the soldiers had followed the “rules of engagement”.
According to the official documents obtained and published by The Intercept under a Freedom of Information Act request, the investigators found that the amount of military force used during the raid was necessary, proportional and applied at appropriate time. It admitted, however, that some tactical mistakes had been made that night.
Surprisingly, investigators did not even mention the Joint Special Operations Command, a secretive and powerful unit in the military which works directly under the President, in its findings even though its commander ended up making a peace offering to the victims’ family after story of the botched assault broke.
The incident, which took place in February 2010 in a village near Gardez in Paktia province of Afghanistan, was termed as a great success of US forces against Taliban, immediately after it was reported.
The US forces claimed that Taliban had killed their women for honor and that the Taliban were killed by the special operations forces in the night-long raid.
However, after some survivors and local investigators presented completely another story about the raid, the US and NATO stance was called in to question.
A UK journalist, in the following weeks, visited the village where raid took place and brought back accounts of witnesses alleging that the women were actually killed by US forces, not the Taliban.
As a result, the Defense Department announced that it would carry out an in-depth investigation into the incident and promised to reveal the facts. The report is now out after being classified for six years.
The US Central Command has also announced that no criminal charges will be brought against any members of the military officials involved in horrifying attack on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, last October.
CENTCOM’s Kunduz investigators decided that the incident had resulted from a combination of unintentional human errors, process errors, and equipment failures.
At least 42 patients and medical workers were killed in the US airstrike.
