About those Special Forces Marines in Afgan --JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — Photos of shot-up military vehicles and a classified Army intelligence report confirm that a group of spec-ops Marines was attacked with small-arms fire during a March 4 ambush in Afghanistan, according to the Marines’ attorneys.
Those claims directly contradict public statements made by the top special operations officer in the region, who said the Afghans who were killed at the site of the ambush were innocent, and that there was no evidence that members of the Marine special operations company took small-arms fire from Afghans after the Marines were ambushed by a car bomb.
Marine Corps Times interviewed five of the seven defense attorneys believed to be representing Marines in this case. “I’ve looked at the photographs of the [Marine] vehicles, and there are bullet holes,” said Mark Waple, an attorney representing the unit’s former company commander, a major who was relieved of duty April 3. “There are multiple impact sites on the vehicle. The photographs confirm what [my client] is telling me.”
Waple said he has studied pictures of at least two different vehicles in the convoy, which was struck by a car bomb that began an incident that set off an international stir after at least 10 Afghan civilians were killed in the fighting. “We know they took fire because there are holes in the vehicles,” said Charles Gittins, an attorney for a sergeant wounded during the attack. “They were on the run from a complex, planned attack.”
Victor Kelley, an attorney hired by a gunnery sergeant in the company, said he has “solid” information that the platoon took small-arms fire. He declined to discuss details of that information. “I think, once the entire story comes out, it will be incontrovertible that they took small-arms fire,” Kelley said. “I’m certain of that.”