Red Cross: US Airstrikes Killed 13 Members of One Family. Pentagon May Blame Taliban for ‘Staging’ Massacre

Among the dead in the US strikes is a Red Cresent Volunteer and more than a dozen members of his family. The Red Cross says it was an airstrike. Is the Pentagon preparing a cover-up?

By Jeremy Scahill

Hours after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “apologized” for US airstrikes that may have killed as many as 130 people in Afghanistan, NBC News is reporting that the US military is preparing to blame the deaths of several Afghan families—that were reportedly killed in US bombing raids this week in Farah Province—on Taliban fighters. The network’s Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski said military sources told him Taliban fighters used grenades to kill three families to “stage” a massacre and then blame it on the US. At present there are few details on this.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, however, has stated bluntly that US airstrikes hit civilian houses and revealed that an ICRC counterpart in the Red Cresent was among the dead. “We know that those killed included an Afghan Red Crescent volunteer and 13 members of his family who had been sheltering from fighting in a house that was bombed in an air strike,” said the ICRC’s head of delegation in Kabul, Reto Stocker. “We are deeply concerned by these events. Tribal elders in the villages called the ICRC during the fighting to report civilian casualties and ask for help. As soon as we heard of the attacks we contacted all sides to warn them that there were civilians and injured people in the area.”

Read the entire ICRC statement here.

Earlier, Secretary of State Clinton met with the US-backed “leaders” of Pakistan and Afghanistan, both of which the United States is regularly bombing and, in the case of Afghanistan, militarily attempting to occupy. The meetings came as the world was learning of the US bombing raid earlier in the week that may have taken the lives of as many as 120 Afghans, including women and children. (Some sources have told The New York Times the death toll could be as high as 130 people).

Regarding the bombing, Clinton said the US “deeply, deeply regret[s]” the “loss of innocent civilian life.” The US, she said, is conducting an investigation. “I wish to express my personal regret and certainly the sympathy of our administration on the loss of civilian life in Afghanistan,” Clinton said. “We deeply regret it. We don’t know all of the circumstances or causes. And there will be a joint investigation by your government and ours,” she told Hamid Karzai. “But any loss of life, any loss of innocent life, is particularly painful.”

If NBC’s report is correct, it sounds like the Pentagon is preparing to blame the Taliban for at least some of the deaths. The US track record of thoroughly “investigating” these massacres is dim. The UN said there was convincing evidence that last year’s US attack on the village of Azizabad in western Afghanistan killed 90 civilians, but the military only acknowledged 30 civilian deaths.

Clinton told the “presidents” of both Pakistan and Afghanistan, “we will work very hard with your governments and with your leaders to avoid the loss of innocent civilian life.”

It seems like a good first step would be to stop bombing both countries and get all of the US tanks and guns out of there and shut down the torture chambers and prisons where people are detained without rights indefinitely.