Security

Marines Find Rocket Attack's Victims as Mystery Deepens

On Tuesday, Company K of the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines visited a house in Marjah, Afghanistan, reduced to rubble by American rockets. Inside were twelve bodies. According to their superior officers, Company K had somehow been involved in the strike from the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System; according to a press release from NATO headquarters […]

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On Tuesday, Company K of the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines visited a house in Marjah, Afghanistan, reduced to rubble by American rockets. Inside were twelve bodies. According to their superior officers, Company K had somehow been involved in the strike from the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System; according to a press release from NATO headquarters in Kabul, the rockets had been a counterattack on a "compound where insurgents were delivering accurate, direct fire."

But "to the Marines of Company K, and an embedded reporter accompanying them, one thing seemed clear: the company had not ordered a rocket strike on that house," the New York Times reports. "'The compound that was hit was not the one we were targeting,' the company commander said."

That's not surprising. The HIMARS system is a "brigade-level asset," controlled by the Marines' top commanders in Afghanistan -- not by junior officers on the ground. "The approval process goes all the way up to the top," one Marine fire support officer told Danger Room in the hours after the incident became public.

After the Marines saw children stream out of the ruined house, the company commander immediately ordered a cease-fire. With Taliban snipers still trying to pick them off, his men raced across the flat, open expanse between their positions and the house, where medics rendered what first aid they could.

They initially counted 11 dead, because one woman was still alive. Marine Corps medics worked to stabilize her condition, although she had lost three limbs. A helicopter came in to evacuate the wounded, but took so much Taliban ground fire that it had to lift off again before the wounded could be loaded on board. The woman died, making the death toll 12.

American military investigators immediately began looking into the incident. At first, they concluded that the rockets veered off target. Then, they concluded that the system had functioned properly; the Marines were simply unaware that the house was filled with innocents. Afghan authorities immediately came to a different conclusion.

The Afghan interior minister... said that only 9 of the 12 dead in the house were civilians, and that the other 3 were Taliban insurgents who had forced their way into the house and used it as a fighting position...

The Afghan government’s account seemed at best debatable... For one thing, if there had been weapons in the house, the Marines would most likely have found them.

Meanwhile, the UN is reporting that 1,260 families and as many as 25,000 people have fled the Marjah area since the push to take the town was announced. That's despite reassurances from NATO headquarters that residents would be safe in their homes.

[Photo: Wikimedia]

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