March 25, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan
The United States has paid $50,000 in
compensation for each Afghan killed in the shooting spree attributed to a U.S.
soldier in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan official and a community elder said
Sunday.
The families of the dead received the
money Saturday at the governor’s office, said Kandahar provincial council
member Agha Lalai.
Each wounded person received $11,000,
Lalai said. Community elder Jan Agha confirmed the same figures.
They were told that the money came from
U.S. President Barack Obama, Lalai said.
A U.S. official confirmed that
compensation had been paid but declined to discuss exact amounts, saying only
that it reflected the devastating nature of the incident. The official spoke
anonymously because of the sensitive nature of the subject.
A spokesman for NATO and U.S. forces
declined to confirm or deny the payments, saying that while coalition members
often make compensation payments, they are usually kept private.
“As the settlement of claims is in most
cases a sensitive topic for those who have suffered loss, it is usually a
matter of agreement that the terms of the settlement remain confidential,” Lt.
Col. Jimmie Cummings said.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is accused of
sneaking out of his base before dawn on March 11 then creeping into houses in
two nearby villages and opening fire on sleeping families within.
It was not immediately clear how much
money had been paid out in all. Afghan officials and villagers have counted 16
dead ~ 12 in the village of Balandi and four in neighboring Alkozai ~ and six
wounded. The U.S. military has charged Bales with 17 murders without explaining
the discrepancy.
The 38-year-old soldier is accused of
using his 9mm pistol and M-4 rifle, which was outfitted with a grenade
launcher, to kill four men, four women, two boys and seven girls, then burning
some of the bodies. The ages of the children were not disclosed in the charge
sheet.
The families had previously received
smaller compensation payments from Afghan officials ~ $2,000 for each death and
$1,000 for each person wounded.
Families of the dead declined to
comment on any payments by U.S. officials on Sunday, but some of them said the
previous day that they were less concerned with monetary payments than with
seeing the perpetrator punished.
On Saturday, a bomb exploded in the
south of the country as a foot patrol of Afghan and NATO forces was passing by
the previous day, killing nine Afghans and one international service member,
officials said.
The group was patrolling through
Arghandab district in Kandahar province late Saturday when it was caught in the
blast, said Shah Mohammad, the district administrator. Arghandab is a farming
region just outside Kandahar city that has long been a bed-down area for
Taliban insurgents. It was one of a number of communities around Kandahar city
that were targeted in a 2010 sweep to oust the insurgency from the area.
The Afghan dead included one soldier, three
police officers, four members of the Afghan “local police” ~ a
government-sponsored militia force ~ and one translator, Mohammad said.
NATO reported earlier Sunday that one
of its service members was killed in a bomb attack in southern Afghanistan on
Saturday but did not provide additional details. It was not clear if this
referred to the same incident, as NATO usually waits for individual coalition
nations to confirm the details of deaths of their troops.
Via: cbsnews
ED: The comments in the CBS news page
are easily as disgusting as any we ever seen in Haaretz or the Jerusalem Post
in how the refer to the victims of their respective military atrocities.
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absolutely unacceptable and disgusting
ReplyDeleteObama, as the leader of the US military, and every one in his administration are war criminals
will the UN, EU, the "civilized" world call for sanctions against such criminal gangsters