US justifies Afghan wedding bombing

A US airstrike that killed dozens of guests at a wedding party in Afghanistan in July was justified, a US military investigation has concluded.

The US say their gunship was fired on

Its report says people at the party in central Afghanistan's Uruzgan province who fired at US aircraft were to blame, not the American pilots who returned the fire.

"While the coalition regrets the loss of innocent lives, the responsibility for that loss rests with those that knowingly directed hostile fire at coalition forces," the report says.

However, the Afghan Border Affairs Minister, Arif Noorzai, told the BBC that he doubted that the report would be accepted by Afghans.

The Afghan Government says 48 civilians - mostly women and children - were killed and 117 injured by the US AC-130 aircraft during the incident, which severely strained relations between Washington and Kabul.

Self-defence

The US report says that the crew of the AC-130 gunship acted "properly and in accordance with the rules" in attacking several sites in the Deh Rawood area.

It also says reconnaissance patrols heard gunfire and explosions at all hours of the day and night, and that the AC-130 came under fire itself.

"The operators of those weapons elected to place them in civilian communities and elected to fire them at coalition forces at a time when they knew there were a significant number of civilians present," the report says.

The US investigators say the airstrike was part of a larger operation in the area, which the report says was at the time home to families of several key Taleban leaders.

BBC