US soldier kills Afghan civilians in Kandahar
Source: BBC
A US soldier in Afghanistan is reported to have killed at least three Afghan civilians after walking off his base in Kandahar province.
The soldier then surrendered to the US military authorities, the BBC understands.
He is believed to have suffered a mental breakdown, the BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17330205
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)Bomb a wedding here, burn some Korans there, shoot some civilians over there, and one of these days our hosts might get irritated.
CAPHAVOC
(1,138 posts)Bring the Boys home now!
Grassy Knoll
(10,118 posts)Hearts go out to the family's who lost loved ones.
Unfortunately War is capitalist's best friend, despite
mental disorder caused by a gross misunderstanding of
why the fuck we are there.
Poll_Blind
(23,864 posts)PB
madokie
(51,076 posts)nothing more nothing less
nanabugg
(2,198 posts)
babydollhead
(2,231 posts)
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)A US soldier in Afghanistan has killed 10 civilians and wounded five in Kandahar province after suffering a breakdown, officials say.
He left his military base in the early hours of the morning and opened fire after entering local homes, the BBC's Quentin Sommerville reports from Kabul.
hardtravelin
(190 posts)That should make things pleasant when I try to work with the guys I'm supposed to be advising in the Afghan Army tomorrow.
PavePusher
(15,374 posts)Please watch your six.
hardtravelin
(190 posts)...and do the job we were sent over here to do, which in my case consists of trying to get their army ready so we can get the hell out. First the shit last month, and now this. The situation is already very tense over here. I am really dreading what's going to come next. You can feel it in the air, and to tell you the truth, I can't blame these people with having had enough of us.
Honestly? Fuck this guy. If it were me, I'd hand his murdering ass over to the people in that village. What a mess.
This isn't my first trip over here, but I hope it's my last.
PavePusher
(15,374 posts)For him and the Afghans who killed folks over the book burning.
But I'm merciful like that.
liberalmike27
(2,479 posts)It's hard to keep your sanity when there is no way out, and you have to come back a 2nd, a 3rd, a 4th,....nth time.
63 million republicans voted, yet they can't keep enough people in the service to go fight the wars they want. Hypocrites.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)soldier is 38 years old and is married with two children, ABC News said, citing a U.S. official it didn’t name.
The soldier was on his first tour of duty in Afghanistan after three tours in Iraq, according to the report on ABC’s website.
I think he was Army - not sure...........
Dustlawyer
(10,497 posts)The Repugs always link together the following: "Against the war then you are against the troops.". I love you guys and gals and wish for your safe return. You are put in a bad situation, in an unpopular war. The longer you are there, the more this type of stuff ratchets up the conflict with ordinary citizens. Now they may respond and take it out on you (sure you already know this)! Be safe!
peacebird
(14,195 posts)lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)
grantcart
(53,061 posts)hjdxfgwe
(4 posts)
MaineDem
(18,161 posts)Including women and children.
This is maddening and sad.
underpants
(182,883 posts)U.S. serviceman kills 16 in house-to-house village shooting, Afghan officials say
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/03/rampage-by-us-soldier-kills-up-to-18-afghan-civilians.html
steaa
(87 posts)Sky news is reporting 9 children among the dead.
PavePusher
(15,374 posts)Fuck.
A-Long-Little-Doggie
(1,011 posts)I am so sorry to hear about this... sorry for the soldier and sorrow for all of the victims.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)Fuck that murderer.
meeksgeek
(1,214 posts)I am generally opposed to the death penalty. However, in this case, I think a very public court-martial, followed with an execution by firing squad, is the only answer. In the village where this horrific mass murder took place.
kurtzapril4
(1,353 posts)He'll get away scot-free. They all seem to. Afghani life is cheap.
BadtotheboneBob
(413 posts)... and make it a 'two fer'...
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)This is why I'm unalterably opposed to the death penalty under any and all circumstances. Vengeance does nothing but corrupt those who seek it.
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)BALANDI, Afghanistan (AP) -- A U.S. service member walked out of a base in southern Afghanistan before dawn Sunday and started shooting Afghan civilians, according to residents and Afghan and NATO officials. Villagers showed an Associated Press photographer 15 bodies, including women and children, and said they were all killed by the American.
The shooting could deepen strife between U.S. forces and their Afghan hosts just as weeks of violence set off by the burning of Muslim holy books at a U.S. base had started to die down. The burnings sparked violent protests and attacks that killed some 30 people. Six U.S. service members have been killed in attacks by their Afghan colleagues since the Quran burnings came to light.
NATO officials apologized for Sunday's shootings but did not confirm that anyone was killed, referring instead to reports of deaths.
"I wish to convey my profound regrets and dismay at the actions apparently taken by one coalition member in Kandahar province, said a statement from Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, the deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.
more . . . http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_AFGHANISTAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-03-11-09-47-51
James48
(4,440 posts)This is going to have a HUGE adverse impact.
Pray for our soldiers now- because they are about to have hell unleashed on them all over Afghanistan when word of this gets out.
Harmony Blue
(3,978 posts)
We (U.S.) need to leave this will spiral out of control fast.Dokkie
(1,688 posts)these kinds of events. Just imagine if the Afghanis react the same way as they did with the Koran burning, this could be the last Afghani to die at the hand of a US soldier. Lets hope this punches the ticket hope to EVERY US service person in that country.
Come home now boys and girls, we miss you.
Faygo Kid
(21,478 posts)Get out of there now. If the Taliban returns, the Seals can deal with them. I am so freaking tired of war, and paying for war, and the deaths of children. Out now.
Ganja Ninja
(15,953 posts)Enough is enough.
man4allcats
(4,026 posts)if this soldier suffered a mental breakdown that led to this heinous, irrational act, is it really conceivable that immediately after committing that act he suddenly, even instantly, became rational enough to appreciate that what he did was wrong and that because it was wrong he should turn himself in to military authorities to await the consequences of his actions? It would seem that he went from irrational to rational pretty quickly. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it does strike me as questionable.
bluedigger
(17,087 posts)That soldier just lit the fuse that will end the occupation of Afghanistan. I wonder if he did it intentionally? Madness and genius often walk hand in hand.
Hugabear
(10,340 posts)This may very well spell the end of the Afghan occupation, but I don't see anything "genius" about it.
More like cold-blooded terrorism.
man4allcats
(4,026 posts)Thanks for a sane perspective.
harun
(11,348 posts)Either way, despicable this soldier was put in this situation and the people who back this war are not brought to justice.
sad sally
(2,627 posts)There have been differing reports over the number of casualties and the number of troops involved.
Witnesses have told Reuters they saw a group of American soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar's Panjwayi district at around 2am, enter homes and open fire.
Haji Samad said 11 of his relatives were killed in one house, including his children. Pictures showed blood-splattered walls where the children were killed.
"They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them," a weeping Mr Samad told Reuters at the scene."I saw that all 11 of my relatives were killed, including my children and grandchildren."
Neighbours said they awoke to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, whom they described as laughing and drunk.
"They were all drunk and shooting all over the place," said neighbour Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where the incident took place. "Their bodies were riddled with bullets."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/us-soldier-held-afghan-shooting-spree-074109101.html
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)A single soldier gone crazy is one thing. A group of drunken soldiers would be worse.
Delphinus
(11,840 posts)I can't stand that this happened, but if it was a group, instead of just one, that's a coverup that cannot be held back.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)If you got a whole unit involved, it's a lot harder to pretend it's some sort of fluke. (No pun or other abstruse allusion intended.)
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)"Mr Karzai said in a statement: "This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven."
The gunman, reported to be an Army staff sergeant, returned to his base after the spree and is said to have turned himself in. US officials have confirmed he is in custody.
Gul Bashra, the mother of the two-year-old who died, told the Associated Press: "They [Americans] killed a child, who was two-years-old. Was this child a Taliban [member]?
"Believe me, I have not seen a two-year-old Taliban [member] yet. There is no Taliban here. They [America] are always threatening us with dogs and helicopters during night raids.""
http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16186397
DCBob
(24,689 posts)We have done all we can do and now, by staying longer, we are simply making matters worse.
think
(11,641 posts)excuse not to write
(147 posts)Anyone who still thinks we can do any good by remaining is a fool.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)not just the soldier who did this but what of the survivors, this is part of how terrorists are created too
jannyk
(4,810 posts)Seems to be only one.
'PANJWAI, Afghanistan — Stalking from home to home, a United States Army sergeant methodically killed at least 16 civilians, 9 of them children, in a rural stretch of southern Aghanistan early Sunday, igniting fears of a new wave of anti-American hostility, Afghan and American officials said.
Residents of three villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province described a terrifying string of attacks in which the soldier, who had walked more than a mile from his base, tried door after door, eventually breaking in to kill within three separate houses. At the first, the man gathered 11 bodies, including those of four girls younger than 6, and set fire to them, villagers said.
American officials in Kabul were scrambling to understand what had happened, and appealed for calm. Officials gave no details about the suspected killer other than to describe him as an Army staff sergeant who was acting alone. “The initial reporting that we have at this time indicates there was one shooter, and we have one man in custody,” said Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a NATO spokesman.
In Panjwai, a reporter for the New York Times who inspected bodies that had been taken to the nearby American military base counted 16 dead, and saw burns on some of the children’s legs and heads. “All the family members were killed, the dead put in a room, and blankets were put over the corpses and they were burned,” said Anar Gul, an elderly neighbor who rushed to the house after the soldier had left. “We put out the fire.”
Lots more at the link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/world/asia/afghanistan-civilians-killed-american-soldier-held.html
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)Sun Mar 11, 2012 6:19pm EDT
{snip}
There were conflicting reports of how many shooters were involved, with U.S. officials asserting that a lone soldier was responsible, in contrast to witnesses' accounts that several U.S. soldiers were present. The incident was one of the worst of its kind since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said anti-U.S. reprisals were possible following the killings, just as the Koran burning incident a few weeks earlier had touched off widespread anti-Western protests in which at least 30 people died.
Neighbors and relatives of the dead said they had seen a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar's Panjwayi district at about 2 a.m., enter homes and open fire.
An Afghan man who said his children were killed in the shooting spree accused soldiers of later burning the bodies.
MORE
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)my hearts breaks for the Afgahis, for our soldiers, for the families of all involved.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Good thing Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan rather than end it when he had the opportunity, otherwise we would be ill-prepared for these extended adventures.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)1839-1919 England was there and then left Russia 10 years in the '80s
Unwinnable ...if that is what we are even trying to do!!??!!
Shit Happens>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
polly7
(20,582 posts)SCVDem
(5,103 posts)What do you expect?
Ban Fox and Limbaugh. This propaganda serves no good purpose.
DallasNE
(7,403 posts)They first surfaced in a big way with the Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters followed by the burning of 60-70 Qu'ran's, the Marine in San Diego blogging he would not follow the illegal orders of Obama and now this. Senior leadership in the military needs to gets its act together because they have allowed command and control issues to sprout up all over the place and it goes all of the way up to the top. Of course this is a propaganda victory for the Taliban. These tensions also show that, if anything, we must quicken how fast we exit Afghanistan.
Deuteros
(9 posts)I really can't judge a person who is in a circumstance that I can only imagine. We KNOW that the same people who smile at the soldiers during the day are out putting IDE's on the road at night. The same "peaceful" village may be home to the people shooting at you the next day. After a few years of this, seeing your buddies sent home missing limbs or burnt faces, seeing women (girls really) scarred by acid attacks etc. Being in a "kill or be killed" state for YEARS. It's a wonder this doesn't happen more often. We treat this like it's something other than a "WAR" I guess it is, if this was a real total war, we would simply bomb everything, defoliate the farms, destroy the factories roads etc. Blockade the country and eliminate the enemies capacity to make war. Like we did to the Germans and the Japanese in WWII. The Soviet Union went in there and they didn't have their "hands tied" as our soldiers do, and they left defeated. You can bet they didn't bat an eye at eliminating a village or two, or a hundred. We have tried this "limited war" thing many times in the past Korea, Viet Nam etc. The end is always the same, to expect a different outcome is insanity.
When this war started I was working as a contractor at the local reservists office. I talked to an Army Major and when I said we would be In Iraq for ten years he looked at me bewildered and asked why I thought that. I explained to him my reasoning and he seemed to think about it, then asked when we would be out of Afghanistan, I responded "Never", we can't "win" we can only hold. The culture in Afghanistan has evolved to include constant invasion and occupation, it's literally a way of life. The geography is a guerrilla fighters ideal, mountains and caves to hide, impossible weather for equipment for months at a time. Few roads, little infrastructure.
Never fight a land war in Asia. Afghanistan AKA the graveyard of empires. You would have thought the architects and proponents of this war would have read at least ONE book on the subject. Ether they were ignorant, or they had some other goal besides victory.
People who should have known better
Alexander the Great
White Huns
Turks
Arabs
Persians
Turkic Ghaznavids
various princes
Genghis Khan.
a bunch more .... to many to name then
Tamerlane
Ahmad Shah Durrani brings us up to the 18th century after the assassination of Nadir Shah at Khabushan a persian.
Were not done yet!
"The Great Game." between Russia and Great Britain saw Anglo-Afghan wars in 1839 and again in 1878
Habibullah, Abdur Rahman's son and successor, was assassinated in 1919
Amanullah, regained control of Afghanistan's foreign policy after launching the third Anglo-Afghan war and attacked India
King Amanullah (1919-29) you getting all this?
1929 after Kabul fell to forces led by Bacha-i-Saqao, a Tajik brigand.
Prince Nadir Khan, a cousin of Amanullah's, rulled part of a year
Bacha-i-Saqao took over in October but four years later he was assassinated
Mohammad Zahir Shah, Nadir Khan's 1933 to 1973 probably the longest time any one government!
Prime Minister Daoud seized power in a military coup on July 17, 1973
On April 27, 1978, the PDPA initiated a bloody coup with support from the USSR under the PDPA brutally imposed a Marxist-style "reform" program
1978, a revolt began, go figure!
1979, Hafizullah Amin now in power, he lasted a few months.
The soviet invasion, that went well!(Not!) with their puppet Babrak Karmal
The soviets spent a lot of time money and lives and by the 1980's they had gotten as far as we have, nowhere....
So in 1986 they put a new guy in charge Muhammad Najibullah
February 15, 1989 USSR called it quits after one million Afghan lives were lost!!! ONE MILLION!
But that didn't stop the fighting, civil war for another couple years of coarse.
Islamic Jihad Council in mid-April 1992 formed to stop the constant fighting and appointed Prof. Sibghatullah Mojaddedi
That lasted until MAY the next guy lasted until heavy fighting broke out in August 1992.
fighting in the capital flared up in January and February 1993. The Islamabad Accord, signed in March 1993, which appointed Hekmatyar as Prime Minister, failed to have a lasting effect.
yadda yadda yadda etc etc etc.
Here come the Taliban.....Osama bin Ludin and his merry men.
AND SOME FOOL IN THE WHITE HOUSE DECIDED IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO DRAG US INTO THIS MESS!!!!!
And a bunch of fools in congress let him, but at least the %1 got big tax cuts so it wasn't all bad.....
And people here are commenting on ONE GUY who went off the deep end after being sent to that hell hole. The entire country has been an insane asylum from most of recorded history.
Frankly I think he's just starting to learn to fit in. Adopt the local culture.
sdfwefwe
(5 posts)
Crowman1979
(3,844 posts)
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)by the time the wheels of military justice stop grinding he'll probably get a medal...
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)The Taliban have vowed to take revenge for a US soldier's "barbaric" killing of 16 Afghan civilians on Sunday morning, as Afghan lawmakers called for the American to be tried in a court in Afghanistan.
>
Funeral services were held in the victims' villages on Monday, and a presidential delegation arrived in nearby Kandahar city ahead of a larger memorial service, as the Taliban said in a statement on their website that they would "take revenge from the invaders and the savage murderers for every single martyr".
The streets of Afghanistan were quiet, despite fears of a repeat of the violence that broke out in February when US forces were found to have burned copies of the Qur'an. Dozens of Afghans died in riots, and six US soldiers were shot dead by Afghan forces they served alongside.
But protests could erupt later; snow in Kabul may have kept some people at home and news can take days to spread in a country where electricity is limited outside urban centres and internet access an elite luxury.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/taliban-vow-revenge-afghan-attack
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- A young Afghan man recounted on Monday the harrowing scene in his home as a lone U.S. soldier moved stealthily through it during a killing spree, then crouched down and shot his father in the thigh as he emerged from the bedroom in the deep of night.
>
"He was walking around taking up positions in the house - in two or three places like he was searching," said 26-year-old witness Mohammad Zahir, who watched the gunman while hiding in another room. "He was on his knees when he shot my father" in the thigh, he told The Associated Press. His father was wounded but survived.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_AFGHANISTAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-03-12-14-00-28
