Fresh off of the announcement that an air strike against Logar Province killed 16 civilians, the governor of Afghanistan’s Kunar Province is reporting that NATO has struck again, killing four civilians in another strike in the Kunar Province.
The Kunar strike came following an insurgent attack on a NATO base in the province, and the four were killed while repairing a water pump in the Asmar District, apparently after NATO assumed them to be the attackers.
In addition to being the second strike killing civilians reported today, this is the latest in a number of recent strikes by NATO forces, including two in the Khost Province over the past week which killed at least 25 civilians.
The Kunar Province has been a site of increasing militant activity lately, with a number of cross-border attacks being launched from Kunar into neighboring Pakistan. Pakistan has complained about NATO’s inability to maintain border security.
Today you report an Italian soldier killed in Afghanistan. Yesterday it was a French soldier. But the five US soldiers killed in Afghanistan on Saturday and Sunday are identified as three “NATO” soldiers.
In fact there has been a virtual ban on reporting the death of US soldiers other than as “NATO” soldiers for months at this site. If the US public was better informed about the extent of US combat deaths in Afghanistan by AntiWar and other media outlets it would not be possible for the US military to continually make false claims about progress in Afghanistan because everyone would know that a very high level of US combat deaths have been reported by the DOD for almost two years with virtually no let up. So what gives? Send me some kind of explanation and I will waste my time some where else.
Moderator’s note: It’s not that complicated, and it’s been explained to you more than once: Antiwar.com identifies killed Afghanistan occupation troops’ nationalities when we KNOW those nationalities. The US in particular seems to take awhile (probably for propaganda/damage control reasons) to acknowledge that any particular soldier killed in action was an American. Why not take the matter up with Leon Panetta, who might have some control over that policy, instead of belaboring it with us, who don’t? – TLK
hate to break it to ya but the US public dont give a rats ass bout US soldiers dying as long as it doesnt affect the all star game or the beer supply.
Civilians? Uh, no, Jason, you must have got that wrong. Surely, they were "militants" even the ones that were still in their mothers' wombs. As our good friend and trusted ally Israel taught us during the Gaza massacre, when you kill a pregnant Mooslem woman, you're actually killing two terrorists not just one.