NATO PLANES KILL 14 AFHGAN CIVILIANS IN RECKLESS BOMBING RAID

Here's another case of NATO (read U.S.) war planes dropping bombs on innocent Afghan civilians. Abdul Waheed Wafa writes in today's The New York Times that 14 Afghan workers were killed on Monday by a NATO air strike.

Waheed Wafa writes:

"The strike occurred late Monday night in the Norgram district of Nuristan when the Afghan workers of Amerifa Road Construction Company were sleeping in tents after a day’s work.

"“Fourteen of our mechanics and laborers were killed as they were asleep in their tents,” said Nurullah Jalali, the executive director of the construction company. “We just collected pieces of flesh from our tired workers and put them in 14 coffins.”

"The governor of Nuristan, Tamim Nuristani, said he could confirm that 13 workers had been “mistakenly” killed when NATO forces bombed the area based on what he said was an intelligence report that insurgents were infiltrating the area.

"“All these victims are civilians, and they were from nearby provinces,” Mr. Nuristani said.
A NATO spokesman said its forces had struck the area in an attack on what it believed were Taliban insurgents but could not confirm that the road workers had been killed."

I have commented many times before on the destruction to innocent life from NATO and U.S. war planes in Afghanistan. When the U.S. drops a bomb, the chances are that there will always be civilian casualties including women and children.

This is sufficient reason to end all air strikes. The airplane should not be used for dropping bombs or inflicting death. The U.S. Air Force and other military services should stop all combat flights over Afghanistan and Iraq. The killing of civilians is a certain result of a U.S. pilot dropping bombs on houses, villages, towns and cities. Because it is a foreseeable effect, the laws of war should be upgraded to ban such flights. No country, including the U.S., should be allowed to intentionally kill civilians even if insurgents or enemy soldiers are present.