The Pentagon press briefing room at the Pentagon in Washington DC. (Credit: DOD)

By Gary Raynaldo      DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

WASHINGTON   DC   –  PENTAGON   –    No  US troops or officials will face disciplinary action for a drone strike in Kabul in August that killed 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children, the  Pentagon said Monday.  Spokesman John Kirby said U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had received a high-level review of the strike which made no recommendation of accountability.  Last month,  a  pentagon report concluded that the U.S. airstrike that killed 10 civilians in Kabul, Afghanistan in August  was an “honest mistake”  that did not violate any law.   

U.S. Airstrike in Kabul killed 7 Children and 3 Adults 

An MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle flies a combat mission over southern Afghanistan  (Credit: Wikipedia Commons / Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt)

The Pentagon spokesman  explained during a Monday December 13 press briefing that accountability was looked at seriously.  

“So it’s — it’s not that this wasn’t — that the issue of accountability was — was not looked at seriously and considered seriously.  It absolutely was.  But in this case and in the context of this particular strike, just a few days after we lost 13 service members at Abbey Gate and just a few days before we were going to complete our — our — our withdrawal from Afghanistan, the context of the very real threats that we faced — in fact, quite tangible threats by ISIS in — in Afghanistan — all of that factored into to — to the decision that — that yes, there were procedural changes that need to occur and will occur, process improvements absolutely will occur, but in this particular case, there — there was not a strong enough case to be made for personal accountability.”

-Pentagon Press Secretary Kirby

(Photo by Gary Raynaldo /  ©Diplomatic Times)  Pentagon Press  Secretary John  Kirby briefs reporters at the Pentagon in Washington DC

A  Hellfire missile was fired by a Reaper drone into a suspected target vehicle that was carrying the 10 who were killed in the  strike.  Casualties included 7 children and 3 adults.  Air Force Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said, the Air Force inspector general who  led the investigation, briefed reporters last month at the  Pentagon about the  probe’s findings into the August 29 drone strike.  The pentagon investigation recommended no legal or disciplinary action.

“Individuals involved in the strike interviewed during this investigation truly believed at the time that they were targeting an imminent threat to U.S. forces. Regrettably, the interpretation or the correlation of the intelligence to what was being perceived at the time in real time was inaccurate. It was an honest mistake. The investigation found no violation of law, including the law of war.”

-U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said

(Photo by Gary Raynaldo   / ©Diplomatic Times)    U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said briefs reporters on the probe’s findings at the  Pentagon in Washington D.C. November 3, 2021.

The UAV operators and intelligence analysts had been monitoring multiple threat streams,  according to Said. Three days before the drone strike, a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. service members and many Afghan evacuees. Said said the drone operators and intelligence analysts believed the strike on the vehicle was a legitimate defensive action designed to prevent an imminent attack. They didn’t realize children were in the area, he said.