'No one has apologized' Kabul kin’s anguish in US drone strike that killed 10
KABUL, Afghanistan — It is the stuff of nightmares: a car burned into oblivion, others smashed and singed. Children’s toys and shoes blackened and blown apart, windows smashed, and doors blown from hinges on impact.
But for Romal Ahmadi, it’s the normal sound of his brother Zmary’s homecoming ritual that has stayed with him.
Zmaray Ahmadi, 38, was one of 10 people, including seven young children, killed in an American drone strike in Kabul that was intended to take out a terrorist threat.
Zmaray would honk the horn of his Toyota Corolla as he pulled up to the bright blue-green gate of the family’s home — prompting the kids to rush to his vehicle in greeting.
“We initially heard the sound and then it blasted the car,” Romal remembers of the horrifying strike that wiped out so much of his family. “Every moment I miss them and every moment I feel in sorrow.”
The Central Intelligence Agency may have given the US military warning — too late — that young children were in or near the car being targeted, according to a Saturday CNN report that cited three anonymous sources for the claim.
American officials initially claimed the drone strike had thwarted an ISIS-K terror attack.
Instead, the Hellfire missile hit Zmaray, a longtime aid worker for a US group, as he pulled into the driveway of that now-decimated home. The victims all lived together in the home with some 15 other extended family members, including Zmaray’s three brothers.
Zmaray, whose name has been spelled in previous reports as “Zemari,” lost three children: Farzad, 11; Faisal, 16, and his eldest, Zamir, 20, a student. Zmaray’s brother Aimal lost a daughter, Malika, 3.
A great-niece, Sumaya, just 2 years old, was also killed, along with Zmaray’s nephew, Naser, 30 — who had worked closely with US Special Forces in Kandahar and was less than a week away from getting married.
Romal, Zmaray’s youngest brother, was sitting in the living room when the drone struck. Romal Ahmadi lost all three of his children: daughter Ayat, 2; and sons Bin Yamin, 6, and Arwin, 7.
“No one has apologized, no one has helped us,” Romal Ahmadi told The Post Saturday morning, just hours after the Pentagon confessed to the blunder.
Several other family members in the home also worked for various international organizations throughout the protracted war, and were together waiting for the call to head to the chaotic airport with their approved Special Immigrant Visa paperwork.
The surviving brothers now huddle together on the floor of a damaged room, looking through pictures of the dead. The grapes they were eating and a pot of tea they shared when tragedy upended their lives remains untouched.
A US Central Command investigation found that Zmaray was loading water, not explosives, into his car — which was surrounded by children — when the Hellfire missile was unleashed.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a statement calling Zmaray an “innocent victim,” adding, “We apologize” — only nobody has delivered the message directly to the mourning family, now homeless.
Romal’s feet are burned from the bomb and it’s evident he is still in a state of shock.
“Nobody is normal now, including the neighbors and the elders and kids,” he says. “If we tell them, ‘Let’s go home,’ they say no and that it is not a good place to be.”
Zmaray was his eldest brother, considered the patriarch of the close-knit family, who supported his siblings amid job losses.
“He was a very kind person and we were left at a young age to him from our parents. He got sisters married and was the sole provider for the family,” Romal said. “Zmaray would have been in America if he would have been alive now.”