Pentagon admits deadly drone strike was mistake

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon acknowledged Friday that a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan on Aug. 29 that officials said was necessary to prevent an attack on U.S. troops was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians, including seven children.

The explosives the military claimed were loaded in the trunk of a white Toyota sedan struck by the drone’s Hellfire missile were most likely water bottles, and a secondary explosion in the courtyard in a densely populated Kabul neighborhood where that attack took place was probably a propane or gas tank. In short, the car posed no threat at all, investigators concluded.

Senior Defense Department leaders acknowledged that the driver of the car, Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group, had nothing to do with the Islamic State group, as military officials had previously asserted. Ahmadi’s only connection to the terrorist group appeared to be a fleeting and innocuous interaction with people in what the military believed was an Islamic State group safe house in Kabul, an initial link that led military analysts to make one mistaken judgment after another while tracking Ahmadi’s movements in a sedan for the next eight hours.

“I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed,” Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference Friday. He said the U.S. was “exploring the possibility of ex gratia payments” to compensate the families of the victims.

The general said the strike was taken “in the profound belief ” that the Islamic State group was about to attack Kabul’s airport, as the organization had done three days before, killing more than 140 people, including 13 U.S. service members.

The findings of the inquiry by Central Command mirrored a New York Times investigation of video evidence, along with interviews with more than a dozen of the driver’s co-workers and family members in Kabul.

Military officials cited the investigation by the Times and other media organizations as providing valuable visual and other evidence that forced the military to reassess the judgments that led it to believe, falsely, that the sedan posed a threat.