Civilians Died In A Strike By Americans, Pakistan Says

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
March 14, 2008
Pg. 12

TANGRAI, Pakistan (AP) — The Pakistani Army said Thursday that civilians had been killed when American-led forces in Afghanistan fired across the border in a strike aimed at Taliban militants.
In Afghanistan, a spokesman for the American-led coalition said troops had used “precision-guided munitions” to strike a compound about a mile inside Pakistan on Wednesday.
The spokesman, Maj. Chris Belcher, said that the troops were responding to an “imminent threat” and that Pakistani authorities were informed afterward.
“We received reliable intelligence indicating senior Haqqani network members were in the compound at the time of the strike,” Major Belcher said Thursday in Kabul.
Sirajuddin Haqqani is a Taliban commander whom the coalition accused Wednesday of organizing a suicide attack on March 3. The bombing killed two NATO soldiers at an Afghan government office.
In Tangrai, a village of about 40 houses surrounded by fields and mountains, residents led an Associated Press reporter to the rubble of a house hit in the attack. Only one of its four walls was standing amid a tangle of mud bricks, bedding and cooking pots.
“We are innocent, we have nothing to do with such things,” said Noor Khan, a greengrocer who said the house was his family home.
He said six of his relatives — four women and two boys — had died in the attack.
The Pakistani Army, which has received billions of dollars from the United States to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban, said that four civilians — two women and two children — had died. The discrepancy could not be resolved.
Major Belcher said he had no information on casualties.
Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a Pakistani Army spokesman, initially said that five artillery shells fired by coalition forces had strayed over the border into Pakistan and that one had hit a home.
Later, after being asked about the coalition statement that a compound had been hit deliberately in an effort to strike at militants, General Abbas said that civilians had been killed and that the coalition needed “to explain how the civilian casualties occurred.”
 
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