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| Afghanistan | |
| US troops claim killing five Al Qaeda fighters | |
| 2003-11-18 | |
Suspected Al Qaeda terrorists attacked a contingent of US and Afghan troops in eastern Afghanistan, sparking a firefight in which five militants were killed, a spokesman for the US military said Monday. The attack occurred Friday in the Barmal district of eastern Paktika province, US military spokesman Maj. Bryan Hilferty told The Associated Press. âAnti-coalition forces attacked US and Afghan National Army forces in the Barmal area,â Hilferty said. âWe returned fire and killed five Al Qaeda terrorists,â he said, adding that eight Afghan army soldiers were wounded in the clash and evacuated to a coalition hospital. Hilferty strongly denied allegations by Paktika police chief Daulat Khan that US forces had killed six civilians in the area on the same day. âWe take our rules of engagement very seriously and I can assure you that these terrorists were not peaceful civilians,â the spokesman said in an e-mail response to a written request for information about the incident. Khan had said six civilians were killed when US warplanes dropped a bomb on their vehicle on a road in Barmal on Friday. Paktika Governor Mohammad Ali Jalali also said six civilians died in US bombardment in Barmal. âSix civilians lost their lives,â Jalali said. âI donât know if they were all members of the same family or from different families.â Jalali has expressed frustration with US âfriendly fireâ incidents in the past, including in April when the US military admitted it killed 11 Afghan civilians by mistake in an air attack near Shkin.
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| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #6 "Y'see, dem guys wid da turbans, dey wudn't no al-Qaeda. That wuz... ummm... my cousins from outta town. An' one o' my sisters." I wish to apply for a scholarship to the Rantburg School of Snappy Dialogue. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2003-11-18 7:43:31 PM |
| #5 It's standard Muslim operating procedure to claim that all of their dead are civilians. This is why the US is alleged to have killed thousands of civilians in Iraq*. The Muslim standard is that Muslims are civilians if they're not in uniform, (and probably even if they are). To them, the civilian/military distinction doesn't apply to non-Muslims - all of them are legitimate targets, especially when Muslims are doing the killing. The philosophy can be boiled down to this - according to the Koran, all non-Muslims are going to hell, so offing non-Muslims merely speeds up the process a little. * Would have been nice if we had, but getting blamed for things we had no part of, is galling. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-11-18 10:18:37 AM |
| #4 sounds like the Governor and Police Chief of Paktika need to be watched very carefully |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-11-18 9:10:15 AM |
| #3 "Jalali has expressed frustration with US âfriendly fireâ incidents in the past, including in April when the US military admitted it killed 11 Afghan civilians by mistake in an air attack near Shkin." -Sounds like it was their mistake. Darwin award material......Let's see; war going on, its night time, you know American Warplanes are in the air loaded to the teeth....Cool, lets shoot off all our weapons in the air like a bunch of drunken banditos........ |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2003-11-18 8:54:11 AM |
| #2 Is your seester cherry-girl,Heffie. |
| Posted by: Raptor 2003-11-18 7:27:31 AM |
| #1 Must have been another of those 'wedding processions' that always seem to shoot at U.S. troops. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-11-18 12:35:01 AM |