US soldier killed 16 Afghans on shooting rampage

According to Hamad Karzai, president of Afghanistan, an American soldier is being held on the suspicion of killing at least 16 Afghan civilians in a pre-dawn shooting rampage a few hundred meters outside of his base in the villages of Alkozai and Balandiin southern Afghanistan today, according to an AP report in the Washington Times.

“When it was happening in the middle of the night, we were inside our houses. I heard gunshots and then silence and then gunshots again,” Mr. Baqi said.

NATO spokesman Justin Brockhoff said a U.S. service member had been detained as the alleged shooter and that the coalition had reports of “multiple wounded” but none killed. The wounded were evacuated to NATO medical facilities, he said.

The service member was being held at a NATO base, and U.S. forces are investigating the shooting in cooperation with Afghan authorities, Mr. Brockhoff said. He said it was not clear if the alleged shooter knew the victims.

There’s no sense in equivocating these shootings with the countless American deaths committed by Afghan nationals in uniform in the last few years, neither does it make sense to accuse all Americans of being capable of committing the same act. This is one individual who acting on his own, otherwise there’d be hundreds more casualties. Yes, it’s a tragedy that this happened, but that doesn’t justify the violence that it will undoubtedly inspire.

Thanks to the dozen or so readers who sent me links to the story.

ADDED: War On Terror News reports that 15 Pakistanis were killed by a suicide bomber while they attended the funeral of an anti-jihadist politician. Let’s see which incident draws the larger protest in the region.

Category: Terror War