Anger Grows at Civilian Deaths by U.S., Afghan Forces
Anger Grows at Civilian Deaths by U.S., Afghan Forces by Kathy Gannon – Associated Press
The workers were sleeping on the mountainside where they had spent a long day harvesting pine nuts in eastern Afghanistan. Some were in tents, others lay outside under the stars, when the U.S. airstrike tore into them.
Only hours before the Sept. 19 strike, the businessman who hired them had heard there was a drone over the mountain and called Afghanistan’s intelligence agency to remind an official his workers were there — as he’d notified the agency days earlier.
“He laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry they are not going to bomb you,’” the businessman, Aziz Rahman, recalled.
Twenty workers were killed in the strike, including seven members of one family. A relative, Mohammed Hasan, angrily described body parts they found scattered on the ground, gesturing at his arm, his leg, his head…