NATO Says Attack Killed Civilians in Pakistan

Mexican troops giving chase to drug smugglers inadvertently crossed the Rio Grande yesterday and unluckily bombed a house in El Paso killing 10 people.

Well it wasn’t Mexican troops, it was NATO forces in Afghanistan, and it wasn’t El Paso but a small town in Pakistan.

Spot the difference.

The NATO force in Afghanistan said Sunday that its soldiers, in pursuing Taliban insurgents on Saturday, had unintentionally chased them across the border into Pakistan, and it confirmed that NATO bombing and helicopter fire caused the deaths of several Pakistani civilians.

Pakistani military authorities had earlier placed the civilian death toll at 10.

NATO did not confirm or deny that total. But Maj. John Thomas, a NATO spokesman, said it appeared that the alliance’s forces had hit a “way station or house” that contained civilians.

“We regret the loss of life, and we certainly want to make it clear that we did not knowingly operate across the Pakistani border,” he said.

NATO’s statement comes a day after Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, chastised the United States and its allies for the “careless” use of military force.

Posted by Watson

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