‘Lies’ by Pentagon
Airstrike ‘killed aid worker & kids, not ISIS’
A US airstrike in Kabul against a supposed Islamic State bomber actually killed an innocent man who worked for a US aid group and his family, according to newly published testimony and footage — raising the specter that the Pentagon lied to the public about the strike.
The reported case of mistaken identity further tars President Biden for his chaotic pullout of US troops from Afghanistan, which left behind hundreds of US citizens and thousands of at-risk Afghans.
Zemari Ahmadi and nine members of his family, including seven children, were killed in the airstrike on Aug. 29, one day before the final US evacuation flights from Kabul, his brother Romal Ahmadi told The New York
Times. Ahmadi, who was the apparent target of the strike, worked for 14 years as a technical engineer in Afghanistan for the Pasadena, Calif.-based charity group Nutrition and Education International, which feeds hungry Afghans.
The aid group had applied for him to move to the US as a refugee.
New security footage from his workplace shows Ahmadi, whose neighborhood had unreliable water service, filling containers with water at his employer’s office at 2:35 p.m. shortly before he returned home. Fire-damaged containers consistent with the water canisters were photographed by the Times.
He and colleagues, who had driven to work, also were carrying laptop computers that day, according to security footage, possibly explaining the military’s claim that the targeted Toyota Corolla contained carefully wrapped packages.
The Times disputed the Pentagon’s claim that secondary explosions proved explosive materials were ignited by the US Reaper drone’s Hellfire missile. Three weapons experts said there was no evidence of a secondary explosion because there were no blown-out walls or destroyed vegetation near the burned-out car. A small crater under the car was consistent with a Hellfire missile, the experts said.
The Pentagon initially presented the airstrike as a successful mission to prevent another bombing of the Kabul airport after 13 US service members and at least 169 Afghans died in a suspected Islamic State suicide attack on Aug. 26.
One day after the airport attack, the US military said it killed two suspected members of ISIS on Aug. 27 in eastern Afghanistan via drone strike. Two days later, the US drone killed Ahmadi in Kabul.
“The procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike,” Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said afterward.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said, “US Central Command continues to assess the results of the airstrike in Kabul on Aug. 29 However, as we have said, no other military works harder than we do to prevent civilian casualties. Additionally . . . the strike was based on good intelligence, and we still believe that it prevented an imminent threat to the airport and to our men and women that were still serving at the airport.”