At least 23 people were killed in the Feb. 21 attack in Uruzgan province. It was the deadliest missile strike for Afghan civilians in six months and occurred as NATO forces were redoubling efforts to avoid killing innocents.
The attack prompted a strong rebuke from Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a quick apology from the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is struggling to gain the broad support among Afghans that is crucial to winning the almost 9-year-old war against the Taliban.
The insurgents claimed a victory Saturday when they captured a government outpost in a remote mountainous region near the Pakistan border.
Jamaludin Badar, governor of Nuristan province, said government forces withdrew from the district headquarters in Bargi Matal early Saturday after a major assault by Taliban militants and a battle lasting several days.
Fighting was still going on and Afghan forces hoped to recapture the district center with the help of NATO airstrikes, Badar said. He could not provide casualties.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed in a phone message sent to reporters that insurgents had taken complete control of the district, captured three police vehicles and forced security forces to flee road checkpoints.
In the civilian deaths case, attack helicopters fired missiles and rockets into the convoy on a main road near Khod village, where U.S. Special Forces and Afghan troops were battling militants at the time, a summary of the investigation said. Commanders judged that the convoy contained fighters heading toward the village to reinforce the militants.
But the order to attack was based on inaccurate information from the crew at an Air Force base in Nevada that was remotely controlling a Predator drone monitoring the convoy and on flawed analysis of the situation by NATO commanders, Army Maj. Gen. Timothy McHale, who led the investigation, wrote in the report.
Poorly functioning command posts "failed to provide the ground force commander with the evidence and analysis that the vehicles were not a hostile threat and the inaccurate and unprofessional reporting of the Predator crew ... deprived the ground force commander of vital information," the report said.
"Information that the convoy was anything other than an attacking force was ignored or downplayed by the Predator crew," it said.
In a memo released Saturday accompanying the report, McChrystal said he had issued letters reprimanding four senior and two junior officers in Afghanistan over the attack. He also called on the Air Force to investigate the actions of the Predator crew.
The report said the convoy drew early suspicion because men in it appeared to be providing security as it was tracked for more than three hours. Its movements matched radio intercepts of militants calling on others to join the battle near Khod, about seven miles (12 kilometers) from the site of the attack.
No women were seen in the vehicles, but two children were spotted near them at one point. This was inaccurately reported by the drone crew, the report said.
After the initial salvo, the helicopter crews stopped firing because they spotted brightly colored clothing amid the convoy
- a strong clue that women were present. Then, video shot from the drone showed women and children present.
