Shocking video from the mountains of Afghanistan show a 500-pound bomb dropped by US bombers land on a US Army infantry outpost after the bombers mistook the outpost for a Taliban hideout, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday.
The dramatic video shows soldiers at the outpost watch as an air force bomber flew overhead. Seconds after seeing the bomber, there is a loud explosion, and the soldiers reacting with poise amongst the chaos caused by the explosion. Thankfully, there were no casualties caused by what appears to be a mistake made by pilot of the bomber.
According to a website for military veterans, army mortar teams spotted Taliban forces on a ridge far from their position in the rugged mountains of Paktika province along the Pakistani border. Simultaneously, air strikes were called in to take out the opposition forces.
It appears, however, that the pilot mistook the army outpost for the Taliban fighters and dropped a 500-pound bomb on their location, narrowly missing the soldiers at the outpost.
“Honestly we had dropped so many bombs up to that point that the thought never even crossed my mind that this could even happen, especially with all the checks put into place,” one of the soldiers tells the website. “About a half second before impact you could hear the bomb screaming in like I hadn’t ever heard before, and I definitely knew at that point something was off.”
The soldier says the impact was so powerful that it knocked people to the ground.
“After the initial realization that it had hit behind us, we were so scatter brained trying to figure out what happened. It hit so close to the guys in the tower it actually knocked the fill out of radios,” he said.
“Once the smoke had cleared and we realized that no one was seriously injured, we were just sitting there in awe as the anger started to build,” he continued. It remains unclear what caused this near-fatal mistake.
