The US on Friday said it has offered to pay unspecified compensation to relatives of 10 people in Afghanistan, including seven children, who were killed by mistake in a US drone strike as US forces were completing their withdrawal.
The Pentagon said in a statement that it was working with the US Department of State to relocate to the US any of those relatives who wish to leave Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
The offer to pay the relatives was made on Thursday in a meeting between US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl and Steven Kwon, the founder and president of an aid group active in Afghanistan called Nutrition and Education International, the Pentagon said.
That organization employed Ezmarai Ahmadi, who was wrongly identified as an Islamic State militant by US intelligence on Aug. 29 during the final days of the chaotic US evacuation from Kabul.
US intelligence tracked his white Toyota for eight hours before targeting the vehicle with a missile, killing seven children and three adults, including Ahmadi.
General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of the US Central Command, said at the time that US intelligence had seen the vehicle at a site in Kabul that had been identified as a location from which Islamic State operatives were believed to be preparing attacks on the Kabul airport.
Three days earlier an Islamic State-Khorasan suicide bomber had killed scores at the airport, including 13 US service members.
However, US officials last month conceded the drone attack was an error.
In the meeting on Thursday “Dr Kahl noted that the strike was a tragic mistake and that Mr Ezmarai Ahmadi and others who were killed were innocent victims who bore no blame and were not affiliated with ISIS-K or threats to US forces,” said a statement attributed to US Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby.
“Dr Kahl reiterated [US] Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s commitment to the families, including offering ex gratia condolence payments,” he added without saying how much money was offered.
Last month, relatives of the people killed in the attack demanded compensation and a face-to-face apology.
Austin has apologized for the botched attack, but Ahmadi’s 22-year-old nephew Farshad Haidari said that was not enough.
“They must come here and apologize to us face-to-face,” he said in a bombed-out, modest house in Kwaja Burga, a densely populated neighborhood in Kabul.
Haidari, whose brother Naser and young cousins also died in the blast, said on Sept. 18 that the US had made no direct contact with the family.
In the meeting on Thursday, Kwon spoke of how Ahmadi worked with that aid organization “over many years, providing care and lifesaving assistance for people facing high mortality rates in Afghanistan.”
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