MCFLY! US Forces Kill 76 Civilians in Afghanistan
by Electric Elliot
How this is not being covered by every major news outlet I don’t know, but thankfully the Guardian and Al Jazeera English are offering some coverage.
According to these sources, US-led forces inadvertently killed 76 civilians in an air-strike in Western Afghanistan on Wednesday. That’s 76 civilians in one air-strike. What’s more, the coalition forces are denying that civilians have been killed at all, but Afghan Interior Ministry, the provincial governor and the police chief have confirmed that not only have 76 civilians been killed, but most of them were women and children.
The coalition is insisting that 30 Taliban members where killed in
the attack, but have yet to confirm more than five civilian deaths.
What is shocking about this story is three-fold:
1. The US potentially killed 76 civilians in an air-raid. How many
times has the US claimed their technology is accurate enough to hit an
ant?
2. The US is denying killing any more than five civilians.
3. The media isn’t covering this at all.
How can the American military be held accountable if these issues are not being discussed? This isn’t the the first time this has happened either. And we thought Blackwater was bad…
August 24th, 2008 at 8:21 am
While I was watching CNN in the airport friday morning, they actually reported this, but in an incredibly callous way. Across the bottom of the screen in text (while they were playing obama video and speculating about his running mate) they first announced a successful air raid, then how it had apparently killed up to 30 taliban and possibly some really really “bad” taliban, then as an after thought, the text scroll bar said possibly up to 100 civilians had been killed in the airstrike. It was so unimportant to them that they couldn’t even pause the Obama coverage for a minute to discuss the implications of either terrorist or civilian deaths.
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August 24th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Ha, ha. “We got the bad guys so it’s okay that up to 100 innocent civilians were killed. It’s called blood-letting. You’ve got to draw some good blood to dispose of the bad.” So unfortunate.
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August 24th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Here’s an update: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/08/200882410517833582.html
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