{"id":193794,"date":"2021-09-06T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2021-09-06T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=193794"},"modified":"2021-08-31T08:43:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T07:43:00","slug":"horror-scene-anger-as-us-drone-attack-kills-afghan-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/09\/horror-scene-anger-as-us-drone-attack-kills-afghan-children\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Horror Scene’: Anger as US Drone Attack Kills Afghan Children"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Kabul Families Say Children Killed in US Drone Attack – Ten members of two families killed \u2013 Washington claims ISKP fighters were the target.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The drone attack on Sunday 29 Aug 2021 killed 10 members of two families.
[Ali M Latifi\/Al Jazeera]<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Aug 2021 – <\/em>The Ahmadi and Nejrabi families had packed all their belongings, waiting for word to be escorted to Kabul airport and eventually moved to the United States, but the message Washington sent instead was a rocket into their homes in a Kabul neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

The Sunday afternoon drone attack, which the US claimed was conducted on an Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP, or ISIS-K) target, killed 10 members of the families, ranging from two to 40 years old.<\/p>\n

Aimal Ahmadi, whose nieces and nephews were among those killed, is still in disbelief. Like others in the neighbourhood, he is incensed that his brother and nephews and nieces were never recognised in the media as what they were, a family going about their life.<\/p>\n

They were innocent, helpless children<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

— Aiman Ahmadi, relative of victims<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For hours, he and the rest of the surviving family had to listen to Afghan and international media refer to their loved ones, whose remains they had to gather with their own hands, simply as suspected ISKP targets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were innocent, helpless children,\u201d Ahmadi says of the majority of the victims, including two-year-old Malika. Had he not gone out to buy groceries, Ahmadi himself could have very easily been one of the victims.<\/p>\n

He says his brother, 40-year-old engineer Zemarai, had just arrived home from work. Because the families were expecting to go to the US, Zemarai asked one of his sons to park the car inside the two-floor house. He wanted his older boys to practice driving before they arrived in the US.<\/p>\n

Several of the children quickly packed into the car, wanting to take the short ride from the street to the garden of the family home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the car had come to a stop, that\u2019s when the rocket hit,\u201d Aimal told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Walls stained red with blood<\/h2>\n

What happened next was an all-too-common scene of mayhem in Afghanistan as frantic relatives and neighbours ran to the scene. Some brought water, hoping to douse the flames that had spread from the Toyota sedan the children had packed into to an SUV parked nearby.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very symbolic that US operations in Afghanistan started with drone strikes and ended with drone strikes. It seems they\u2019ve learned nothing in 20 years<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

— Emran Feroz, an Afghan journalist<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Neighbours speaking to Al Jazeera said the house, where little boys and girls had been playing a few minutes prior, turned into a \u201chorror scene\u201d. They described human flesh stuck to the walls. Bones fallen into the bushes. Walls stained red with blood. Shattered glass everywhere.<\/p>\n

Talking about one of the younger boys, Farzad, a neighbour said: \u201cWe only found his legs.\u201d<\/p>\n

By early Monday morning, Zemarai\u2019s home was crowded with family, neighbours and concerned friends who had come to see the burned cars, the plastic children\u2019s toys bent out of shape by the impact of the blast and the little girl\u2019s slippers that were left in one of the downstairs rooms.<\/p>\n

The US maintains it conducted, \u201ca self-defence unmanned over-the-horizon air strike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat\u201d, it said in a statement late Sunday afternoon, referring to the ISIL affiliate.<\/p>\n

Mangled remains of the car that came under drone attack [Ali M Latifi\/Al Jazeera]<\/strong><\/figure>\n

The statement went on to say US Central Command is \u201cassessing the possibilities of civilian casualties\u201d but that they have \u201cno indications at this time\u201d that civilians were killed.<\/p>\n

That evening, the US military said it has launched investigations into the incident.<\/p>\n

To the Ahmadis and their neighbours, claims that the attack had targeted a potential ISKL car bomber is infuriating.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are all Afghan, we know what a car laden with explosives would do if it was struck from the sky,\u201d said Abdol Matin, a neighbour who grew up with the Ahmadi children and saw the boys as brothers. Like so many others gathered in the Ahmadi residence, Abdol Matin does not buy Washington\u2019s claim that they had conducted a precise strike on an enemy target.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can\u2019t manage to hit the right target, then leave Afghanistan to the Afghans,\u201d said Abdol Matin the day before US forces are scheduled to fully depart from the country after 20 years, ending America\u2019s longest overseas war.<\/p>\n

Anger in the neighbourhood<\/h2>\n

Other neighbours said one only had to look at the two oldest victims, Zemarai and his brother-in-law, Naser Nejrabi, as proof that they had no ill intentions or affiliation with any armed groups.<\/p>\n

Zemarai had been working as a technical engineer for more than a decade. His brother-in-law, Naser Nejrabi, who was among those killed, had served in the Afghan Army in the southern province of Kandahar.<\/p>\n

Zemarai\u2019s other brother, Romal, who was also away at the time of the attack, had worked as a driver at the Ministry of Water and Energy. The men\u2019s time with the government and affiliation with foreign forces had earned the family a Special Immigrant Visa offered by the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey worked for private companies. They served in the military. They were part of the government, what would make anyone think they\u2019re terrorists,\u201d said Aimal.<\/p>\n

The drone attack on Sunday killed 10 members of two families [Ali M Latifi\/Al Jazeera]<\/strong><\/figure>\n

The Ahmadis were preparing to leave the residential neighbourhood only a few kilometres from Kabul airport where they have lived for decades. Over the past week, the family had congregated in the small two-floor home, busily packing their bags in anticipation of the day they would depart from the very airport Washington claimed they posed a threat to.<\/p>\n

Enraged neighbours said the family should have their names cleared and that a real investigation should take place.<\/p>\n

Civilian casualties from US and Afghan aerial attacks are not rare in Afghanistan but over the past 15 years, most of them were in remote areas of provinces like Nangarhar, Baghlan, Maidan Wardak, Takhar, Herat, Kunduz and Logar, not the capital city.<\/p>\n

The cost of these drone attacks<\/h2>\n

Emran Feroz, an Afghan journalist based in Germany who has investigated the impact of aerial attacks on Afghan civilians for 10 years, says the fact that Sunday\u2019s attack took place in Kabul will help draw media attention to an issue that has plagued Afghan civilians since the US-led invasion in 2001.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very symbolic that US operations in Afghanistan started with drone strikes and ended with drone strikes. It seems they\u2019ve learned nothing in 20 years,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Feroz, who published the German-language book Death at the Push of a Button in 2017, says the results of the US drone war can be seen on the streets of Kabul where high-ranking Taliban members, including some who had been reported \u201ckilled\u201d multiple times have been roaming the capital since the group took control of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the question no one seems to want to ask is who was killed instead of them?\u201d<\/p>\n

Feroz said another US drone attack was carried out in Nangarhar a day before the attack on the Ahmadi family, but that \u201cnobody asked about it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the media outlets repeated Joe Biden\u2019s statement that the targets were Daesh without questioning it,\u201d he said referring to the Arabic name for the ISIL armed group.<\/p>\n

Feroz says that from the start of the US invasion through to its final days, Washington and its allies have been trying to \u201cconvince the Afghan people that these aerial attacks are only killing terrorists but now, in Kabul, we are seeing their true costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

He points to the first-ever US drone attack in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 \u2013 which claimed to kill Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar \u2013 as proof of the deadly cost of these tactics.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo this day we don\u2019t know who was actually killed, and we may never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

Ali M Latifi is an online journalist with Al Jazeera English based in Kabul. He has covered stories in Afghanistan, Greece, and Qatar and reports on Afghanistan, migration and refugee issues.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ahmadi and Nejrabi families had packed all their belongings, waiting for word to be escorted to Kabul airport and moved to the United States. The Sunday [29 Aug] afternoon drone attack, which the US claimed was conducted on an Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP, or ISIS-K) target, killed 10 members of the families, ranging from two to 40 years old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":193797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219],"tags":[93,1106,112,95],"class_list":["post-193794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-asia-2","tag-afghanistan","tag-drones","tag-pentagon","tag-us-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}