A US strike on August 29 killed 10 innocent people — including seven children — in a war crime that eviscerated the 20-year US occupation of Afghanistan. Today, documents recovered through a lawsuit showed how prejudices contributed to the deadly strike, as well as how US authorities made misleading claims to conceal their judgment of civilian casualties.

say their names

Farzah Ahmadi, age 9
Faisal Ahmadi, age 10
Zemari Ahmadi, age 40
Zamir Ahmadi, age 20
Naseer Ahmadi, age 30
Binyamen Ahmadi, age 3
Armin Ahmadi, age 4
Sumaya Ahmadi, age 2
Malika Ahmadi, age 2
Ahmad Naser, age 30

killed 08/29/2021 by a US drone strike https://t.co/v1y8Wj4oIU

— “Jacob” 🐐 (@playerboycardio) September 10, 2021

The US covered its bloody track

During the hasty US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, US military analysts noticed a white Toyota Corolla pull up at what they claimed to be a "terrorist camp”. They followed the automobile throughout Kabul for several hours. They made a life-or-death decision based on assumptions prone to confirmation bias, authorizing a drone strike. Just like that, hell broke loose, and a volley of missile strikes on the car by an MQ-9 Reaper drone was ordered.

Hours later, US officials claimed that they had effectively foiled a "terrorist" attack.

However, reports of civilian casualties started to emerge, with the death toll increasing by the minute. According to excerpts of a US Central Command inquiry acquired by The New York Times, military analysts reported within minutes of the deadly strike that people may have been killed, and within three hours had determined that at least three children had been murdered.

The records also reveal how assumptions and prejudices contributed to the deadly strike.

To cover their doing, Pentagon officials made comments indicating they had "no indicators" but would investigate “whether a secondary explosion had killed civilians." They blamed it all on an illusional "secondary explosion". 

Read more: US not to punish troops over deadly Kabul airstrike 

US’ pack of lies unmasked

The investigation was concluded a week and a half after the strike and was never made public, but The New York Times received 66 partially redacted pages of it through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against Central Command.

Military officials continued to conceal what they knew about the strike. Three days later, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said the attack was “righteous”, claiming that it had killed an ISIS facilitator. However, he referred to the civilian casualties, which included children, killed in the attack as “others".

Milley boldly told reporters that “the strike was righteous and had killed an ISIS facilitator as well as others, but who they were, we don’t know. We’ll try to sort through all of that.”

Over the next few weeks, Pentagon authorities maintained that the hit killed an ISIS target, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

Read more: Sec Blinken Does Not Know If Drone Killed Aid Worker or ISIS

A blurry image, no trace of explosives, and children detected

Zemari Ahmadi, a long-time humanitarian worker and the car's driver, was among those slain. The youngest victims were two 2-year-old girls Sumaya and Malika.

On Aug 29, the #US bombed a residence house before its withdrawl from #Kabul, killing 10 civilians from one family. Among the victims were seven children, including two-year-old girls, Malika and Sumaya. pic.twitter.com/MeF1qDSBpP

— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) September 12, 2021

A Times investigation based on video evidence and interviews with more than a dozen of coworkers and family members of Zemari Ahmadi, a long-time humanitarian worker slain in the strike, discovered no trace of explosives in the vehicle on September 10.

The evidence proved that military analysts have recklessly determined that a package carried into the car had explosives.

Ahmadi, an electrical engineer for a California-based relief organization had spent the day picking up his boss's laptop, driving colleagues to and from work, and packing water canisters into his trunk to take home to his family. Ahmadi was the "ISIS target" claimed to have been killed by the US military.

Officials claimed that their target had visited an ISIS "safe house", but The New York Times unmasked that the structure was actually the residence of Ahmadi's boss, whose laptop he was retrieving.

It is hard to believe that US military analysts have mistaken a laptop for a bag of explosives.

Here’s another conclusive piece of evidence: A drone was operated by the CIA, and it detected children in the car moments before the deadly strike, according to CNN.

It is also worth noting that The New York Times obtained footage last January that provided additional evidence to what really happened minutes before, during, and after the strike, uncovering that the fuzzy imagery was difficult to comprehend in real time and was prone to confirmation bias.

“The at-times blurry footage that operators were watching will continue to be scrutinized for new details about how the episode unfolded while demonstrating the heightened risk of error that accompanies any decision to fire a missile in a densely populated neighborhood,” NYT added in its report.

Killing is likened to removing "chess pieces"

These revelations coincide with Prince Harry reportedly admitting in his book that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan. Rubbing salt into the wound, he likened his actions to removing "chess pieces".

Such acts, if proven, amount to “war crimes”. Harry's revelations were deemed boastful and inappropriate, causing a huge shock and a wave of indignation justified worldwide. 

Senior Taliban official Anas Haqqani bashed the Duke of Sussex over the remarks, saying those Harry killed were Afghans who had families.

"Mr. Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans," Haqqani tweeted, accusing the Prince of committing "war crimes".

Harry served in the British military for ten years, all the way up to the rank of captain.

He served twice, first as a forward air controller ordering in airstrikes in 2007 and 2008, and then as an attack helicopter pilot in 2012 and 2013.

The resurfacing of these war crimes proved that the US military alongside the UK military violated the accepted rules and customs of war in Afghanistan among other countries which are or were under their occupation. More than 387,000 civilians have been killed since 2001 as a direct result of the war by the US and its allies, according to Watson Institute. One thing is crystal clear: All those who are responsible for war crimes won’t be punished.

Read next: Pentagon downplays civilian deaths from US strikes