Harrowing leaked footage shows US drone strikes in Afghanistan as pilot admits killing two civilians & child by mistake
HARROWING leaked footage has shown a series of US drone strikes in Afghanistan as a pilot admitted he killed two innocent Afghan civilians and a child by mistake.
The US drone operators, who were working in Helmand province in 2019, have questioned the purpose of the strikes amid the ongoing withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in recent weeks.
The pilot and a number of other drone operators claimed the strikes carried out by the Task Force South West served little purpose when the Marines had essentially given up on Helmand.
"The drone strikes were punitive. Killing for the sake of killing," one of the operators told Connecting Vets, which published the leaked footage and a series of journal entries from the pilots.
A second source said: "It's nihilistic, there is no point. It was clear that we were not making a difference."
In a distressing journal entry, one of the drone operators described the traumatic aftermath of the accidental killing of a young Afghan family.
"My productivity today was derailed. We killed two innocent men and a charger," he wrote, referring to military slang for a child.
"They were on a motorcycle and by dumb luck drove into the same intersection as our target as the Hellfire struck," he added.HARROWING leaked footage has shown a series of US drone strikes in Afghanistan as a pilot admitted he killed two innocent Afghan civilians and a child by mistake.
The US drone operators, who were working in Helmand province in 2019, have questioned the purpose of the strikes amid the ongoing withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in recent weeks.
The pilot and a number of other drone operators claimed the strikes carried out by the Task Force South West served little purpose when the Marines had essentially given up on Helmand.
"The drone strikes were punitive. Killing for the sake of killing," one of the operators told Connecting Vets, which published the leaked footage and a series of journal entries from the pilots.
A second source said: "It's nihilistic, there is no point. It was clear that we were not making a difference."
In a distressing journal entry, one of the drone operators described the traumatic aftermath of the accidental killing of a young Afghan family.
"My productivity today was derailed. We killed two innocent men and a charger," he wrote, referring to military slang for a child.
"They were on a motorcycle and by dumb luck drove into the same intersection as our target as the Hellfire struck," he added.
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