Date February 12, 2010 Victims 5 | Attack type Killings Perpetrator U.S. Army Rangers | |
Location Khataba village, Paktia Province, Afghanistan | ||
The Khataba raid was an incident in the War in Afghanistan in which five civilians, including two pregnant women and a teenage girl, were killed by U.S. forces on February 12, 2010. All were shot when U.S. Army Rangers raided a house in Khataba village, outside the city of Gardez, where dozens of people had gathered earlier at the home to celebrate the naming of a newborn baby. Initially, U.S. Military officials implied the three women were killed prior to the raid by family members, reporting that the women had been found "tied up, gagged and killed." But investigators sent by the Afghan government reported, based on interviews and pictures of the scene, that U.S. Army Rangers removed bullets from the victims' bodies and cleaned their wounds as part of an attempted cover-up. NATO denies this allegation, and Afghan investigator Merza Mohammed Yarmand stated, "We can not confirm it as we had not been able to autopsy the bodies." The US military later admitted that the three women were killed by the special forces team during the raid.
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Response
NATO promised a full investigation of the incident but the bodies of the deceased were buried according to religious tradition before NATO could conduct autopsies to confirm the allegations. Insisting that the deaths were a "terrible mistake" Vice Admiral William McRaven, the head of Joint Special Operations Command, the unit which conducted the raid, visited Khataba two months after the raid. He offered an apology and accepted responsibility for the deaths and made a traditional Afghan condolence offering of sheep. The Army Rangers that had conducted the raid faced no disciplinary measures since they had followed the rules of engagement.