US Drone Attack Kills 10 Civilians In Afghanistan, Pentagon: No Lawlessness

United States drone illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/Staff Sgt. Christopher Matthews)

JAKARTA - The US drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians was a wrongdoing that did not violate any laws, a Pentagon inspector said after an investigation.

"It was an honest mistake," US Air Force Inspector Lieutenant General Sami Said told reporters, citing the BBC on November 4.

The attack, carried out on August 29, killed three adults, including a man who worked for a US aid group, as well as seven children.

The attack comes as Western countries seek to evacuate Afghans after the Taliban took control of the country on August 15.

The youngest children killed were two-year-old Sumaya, and 12-year-old Farzad, the family told the BBC.

Speaking shortly afterwards Ramin Yousufi, a relative, said it was a "brutal attack" based on "misinformation".

"Why did they kill our families? Our children? They were so burnt that we couldn't identify their bodies, their faces," he criticized.

Lieutenant General Said said there had been "errors of execution, combined with confirmation bias and communication breakdown" which led to "regrettable civilian casualties".

But he said the investigation found "no violations of the law, including the Laws of War".

"This is not a criminal act, a random act, negligence," he added.

He said the US personnel who carried out the drone strike truly believed they were targeting an "emergency threat" from the Islamic State terrorist group to US troops and diplomatic staff at Kabul airport.

The attack came days after ISIS-K, the group's Afghanistan branch, said it was behind a devastating bomb attack outside Kabul airport, where thousands of Afghans have gathered to try to flee the country, killing at least 170 people including 13 US military personnel.

The US military says it has intelligence that ISIS is planning a second attack on the evacuation operation.

"What may be damaged is not intelligence, but the correlation of intelligence with certain houses," said Lieutenant General Said.

Intelligence reports have implicated a white Toyota Corolla with suspected explosives. However, Lieutenant General Said said the US then tracked down the wrong car.

"We just didn't take the Toyota Corolla which we believed we should have taken," said Said.

Those involved in the US drone strike believed the house was empty, failing to see a child enter the target area two minutes before the rockets were fired.

The US military also believes that previous airport bombers had carried explosives in computer bags, so when operators planning an attack saw people they were monitoring holding computer bags, they believed they had the right target, an example of 'confirmation bias'.

"It turned out, and we confirm, it was a computer bag" and not explosives, said Lieutenant General Said.

After an initial investigation, the Pentagon acknowledged in September that the drone strike was a tragic mistake, and would compensate the surviving family members.