Pentagon: No troops to be punished for deadly Kabul strike

WASHINGTON • None of the military personnel involved in a botched drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 10 civilians will face any kind of punishment, the Pentagon said on Monday.

The Pentagon said in September that the last US drone strike before American troops withdrew from Afghanistan the month before was a tragic mistake that killed the civilians, including seven children, after initially saying it had been necessary to prevent an attack on troops by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terror group.

A high-level investigation found no violations of law but stopped short of fully exonerating those involved, saying such decisions should be left up to commanders.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin approved two senior commanders' recommendation not to punish anyone. They found no grounds for penalising any of the military personnel involved in the strike.

"What we saw here was a breakdown in process and execution in procedural events, not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership," said Pentagon's chief spokesman John Kirby.

In two decades of war against shadowy enemies like the Al-Qaeda and ISIS, the US military has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians by accident in war zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia. And while the military from time to time accepts responsibility for an errant air strike or a ground raid, rarely does it hold specific people accountable.

"This decision is shocking," said Dr Steven Kwon, founder and president of Nutrition and Education International, the US-based aid group that employed Mr Zemari Ahmadi, the driver of a Toyota sedan struck by the US drone.

"How can our military wrongly take the lives of 10 precious Afghan people and hold no one accountable in any way?"

NYTIMES