According to Reuters, the residents of the two villages recently struck by US airstrikes have prepared a list of the names of those killed. The Deputy Governor of Farah Province has confirmed that the list provided by residents of Geraani includes the names of 90 civilians, while the list provided by residents of nearby Ganj Abad includes the names of 57 others.
Of course, as I mentioned below, the investigation is still ongoing. What is important to remember in this case is that these villagers are the very same people that were, as numerous reports have stated, forced into various buildings by militants and used for cover. Therefore, their figures would certainly not include militants killed in the strikes, especially if the deaths of so many of their fellow villages and family members were the result of militants using them as cover with regards to the ground battle that was underway with Afghan forces prior to the strikes. Unless, that is, the residents of both villages are part of a Taliban propaganda initiative and are therefore willing to lie about the extent of civilian losses – something that US military officials stated was a possibility until today.
The US response to the totals provided by the villagers is what you might expect…
“While the United States military is finally willing to concede that it killed at least some people in the massive Farah air strike, they scoffed at a list of the 147 names of civilians local officials say were killed in the attacks, which destroyed multiple homes across two villages.
Officially, the military is now saying the toll is being “extremely over-exaggated” by the Afghan government. The strike, which is now being called by far the deadliest single incident since the 2001 US invasion, has outraged the civilian population and led President Hamid Karzai to demand that the US put an end to all air strikes in the troubled nation.
The concession that they had killed 50 people, while insisting most of them were insurgents, flew in the face of reports from numerous sources and comments from a myriad of Afghan officials. Still, it was a step up from previous claim that the Taliban had rounded up all the people ahead of time, killed them with hand grenades, packed the bodies into houses, then fooled the US into leveling the houses. Yesterday, they admitted that claim was “thinly sourced.”
…more warm jets.
