US air strike wiped out Afghan wedding party, inquiry finds

Official investigations have found that US-led air strikes a week ago killed 64 people, most of them women and children, the heads of separate investigation teams said. A US air strike killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, as they were traveling to a wedding in Afghanistan, an official inquiry found on July 11. The bride was among the dead. Another nine people were wounded in the attack on July 6, the head of the Afghan government investigation, Burhanullah Shinwari, said. Fighter aircraft attacked a group of militants near the village of Kacu in the eastern Nuristan province, but one missile went off course and hit the wedding party, said the provincial police chief spokesman, Ghafor Khan. The US military initially denied any civilians had been killed. Lieutenant Rumi Nielson-Green, a spokeswoman for the US-led coalition, told AFP the military regretted the loss of any civilian life and was investigating the incident. The US is facing similar charges over strikes two days earlier in another border area of Afghanistan. The nine-member inquiry team appointed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to look into the wedding party incident found only civilians had been killed in the attack. "We found that 47 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in the air strikes and another nine were wounded," said Shinwari, who is also the deputy speaker of Afghanistan's senate. "They were all civilians and had no links with the Taliban or al-Qaida." Around 10 people were missing and believed to be still under rubble, he said. The inquiry team were shown the bloodied clothes of women and children in a visit to the scene. A separate investigation into a previous US air strike on July 4 in the northeastern province of Nuristan had found that 17 civilians were killed there, said General Mohammad Amin, a defense ministry official who headed the team. The coalition has said this hit "several" militants who were fleeing after attacking a base. "We found that in the bombing, 17 people were killed and nine were wounded, Amin said. "They are all civilians." Afghan authorities said before that the dead included two doctors and two midwives who were leaving the area after the coalition said it was preparing an operation there. The relatives of some of the victims were paid compensation, Amin said, warning the killings could see a backlash against the government and the international troops helping it to fight an extremist insurgency. "If the government keeps quiet about these civilian casualties in Nuristan like in the past, it will be bad for the security of the province," he said.