An American investigator of the last month NATO attack on Pakistani border posts which killed 24 soldiers has found that the US forces ‘acted in self defense and with appropriate force after being fired upon’.
“The investigating officer found that U.S. forces, given what information they had available to them at the time, acted in self defense and with appropriate force after being fired upon,” a US Department of Defence statement said on Thursday.
The investigator also found that there was no intentional effort to target persons or places known to be part of the Pakistani military, or to deliberately provide inaccurate location information to Pakistani officials.
“Nevertheless, inadequate coordination by U.S. and Pakistani military officers operating through the border coordination center — including our reliance on incorrect mapping information shared with the Pakistani liaison officer — resulted in a misunderstanding about the true location of Pakistani military units”.
“This, coupled with other gaps in information about the activities and placement of units from both sides, contributed to the tragic result,” the investigator said in his report.
A statement said that the findings and conclusions were forwarded to the Department through the chain of command and the results have also been shared with the Pakistani and Afghan governments, as well as key NATO leadership.
“For the loss of life — and for the lack of proper coordination between US and Pakistani forces that contributed to those losses — we express our deepest regret,” the statement said.
The US further expressed sincere condolences to the Pakistani people, to the Pakistani government, and most importantly to the families of the Pakistani soldiers who were killed or wounded.
The statement said that US will learn from these mistakes and take whatever corrective measures are required to ensure an incident like this is not repeated.
“The chain of command will consider any issues of accountability. More critically, we must work to improve the level of trust between our two countries”.
The statement said that the US cannot operate effectively on the border — or in other parts of the bilateral relationship — without addressing the fundamental trust still lacking between Pakistan and US.
“We earnestly hope the Pakistani military will join us in bridging that gap,” the statement said.
NATO attack probe: US forces acted in “self-defence”
