Source:
WiredWhen a pair of rockets killed 10 or more civilians in Afghanistan on Sunday, the military said the weapons had veered away from its intended target by a thousand feet or more. But a senior coalition military official is now telling CNN’s Afghanistan Crossroads blog that “the rocket was not off target at all. The official said troops hit the building they were aiming for but did not know that civilians were inside.”The official has direct knowledge of the incident, but he declined to be named because an investigation is under way. Coalition troops targeted the building after taking “constant fire from five locations” in its immediate vicinity, the official said.
That would make the tragedy a failure of intelligence, instead of mechanical error or mistyped coordinates. “The big issue is going to be target verification,” an Army fire support officer told Danger Room on Sunday. “That commander on the ground, he’s ultimately responsible for clearing his own fires, for making sure there are no friendlies or civilians in the target area.”
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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/02/deadly-afghanistan-rocket-attack-was-actually-on-target/#ixzz0fiCFhZBF
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