A teacher at a girls’ school run by the British charity Care International was killed along with her three children and her brother-in-law during a US Special Forces raid on a nearby house in the eastern Afghan province of Khost.
The US military conceded that its forces killed the civilians in error during the night-time raid that targeted the neighboring compound of a suspected militant. The father of the dead family is a lieutenant-colonel in the Afghan Army fighting the Taleban in the restive province of Ghazni.
According to the police chief for the province, Commander Ghazuddin, who uses only one name, US soldiers climbed on to the wall of the family’s compound in the early hours of the morning, seeking better vantage points for the raid on the compound of the suspected insurgent.
The occupants mistook the US soldiers for thieves breaking into their home and opened fire on them. Most Afghan families store weapons in their homes. “The Americans shot them thinking they are insurgents,” the police chief said.
The US military reported that two males, two females and an infant were believed to have died in the incident, and two other women were wounded. A relative of the dead family told reporters that the dead infant was a boy born last week. “This was a terrible tragedy,” a US spokesman, Colonel Greg Julian, told The Times.
“We were targeting an insurgent in an adjacent home who was captured with no shots fired. They [the family] thought they were being robbed and fired on our troops. We are terribly upset about this family. We will look after the surviving members and we will try to prevent this happening again.”
Care International issued a statement after the incident. “Care’s thoughts go out to the remaining members of the family, and we stand in solidarity with the community in this difficult time. Care strongly condemns the action and demands that international military forces operating in Afghanistan are held accountable for their actions and avoid all attacks on innocent civilians in the country.”
The dead woman had been trained as a secondary school teacher under a scheme developed by Care International to put small secondary schools for girls inside the homes of respected local families. Her daughter, who was also killed, was a pupil in her class.
The home of the dead teacher contained a library provided by the charity and other teaching aids.
About 300 girls are being educated at such schools in Khost and the teachers are paid by their own community.
Afghan staff at the charity were too upset to speak about the incident. Care’s deputy director in Afghanistan, Jamie Terzi, told The Times: “I understand this was a mistake, but I am deeply saddened on behalf of that community and for the work that woman was doing in educating women. Our staff supported her and helped her set up this school.”
International aid agencies have repeatedly criticised the night raids carried out by US Special Forces, as has the Afghan Government, which is eroding support for foreign forces.
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