“If they desire to leave, then we’ll certainly do everything we can to facilitate getting them out,” he said.ĬENTCOM, the geographic command that oversees military operations in the region, declined to comment when asked whether it had reached out to Zamarai Ahmadi’s family, if it was working toward resettling the family, and protecting them while they were still in Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told the Wednesday hearing that the US would continue to work through State Department channels to engage the family. “I just hope the US government has the compassion to grant what they want.” I think that they deserve one,” she said. “It’s going to be so hard for his wife and daughter to survive in Afghanistan,” said Sonia Kwon, a senior advisor at NEI. Instead they were killed by the US military Relatives and neighbors inspect debris from a US missile strike in Kabul on Sunday, August 29. The California-based nonprofit Nutrition and Education International (NEI) where Zamarai Ahmadi worked has supported the family as best as it can, including helping them to rent another house, according to Zamarai Ahmadi’s boss, who asked to only be known by his middle name, Walid, for fears over his security.
#Us drone strike kills children full
“A house full of life was turned into a graveyard.”Įven before the strike, the family were applying for visas to get to the US and out to safety. “They have admitted their mistake, but they cannot give us back our family,” Rohina Ahmadi said. The family says they still haven’t heard anything from the US beyond public statements. “We don’t know what to plan and what to do, how we should move forward, with no future we keep on living.”Ī house full of life was turned into a graveyard. “Right now, once again, I think that I lost my father once more,” Emal Ahmadi said. He was the breadwinner, made key decisions and had been like a father to him since their father died when Emal was just 8. Zamarai Ahmadi was the head of the family who all lived together in the same compound, says his younger brother Emal Ahmadi. The family’s US connections through Zamarai Ahmadi’s work are now widely known, and his death has left his wife and daughter without a husband and father in a country where women can’t leave the house without male companions.Įmal Ahmadi is still reeling from the loss of his family members. The strike has made them vulnerable in more ways than one. The twisted metal remains of Zamarai Ahmadi’s Toyota Corolla still sits in courtyard where it – and he – was struck.īut the home is empty – the family have moved to a safer location in the hills of Kabul. One month after the strike, pockmarks scar the walls of the Ahmadi family home, hinting at the force of the Hellfire missile. “But they don’t know what my family is going through, what we were and what we are now.” “(The US) just showed to the world that they made an apology to us and fulfilled their responsibility,” said Zamarai Ahmadi’s sister Rohina. And they are desperate to get out of the country to safety. They fear reprisals over their connections with the US.
The family struggles to pay for food, clothing and rent.
McKenzie had previously offered his “profound condolences” and said the US was exploring the possibility of ex gratia payments.īut one month on from the strike, the Ahmadi family say they are yet to receive any word from the US military, let alone any compensation. The testimony appears to contradict information supplied to CNN almost two weeks after the strike by a US military official who said the US had “reasonable certainty” that at least one ISIS-K facilitator had been killed.Įmal Ahmadi, who lost 10 family members in a drone strike, mourns them at a Kabul gravesite. Frank McKenzie, the Commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), said the military knew civilians had been hit within four or five hours of the strike – and they knew they had hit the wrong target within days. In a hearing Wednesday on the Afghanistan withdrawal, Gen. The US military has since conceded it made a “tragic mistake,” admitting that all of the 10 people killed were civilians – and none were associated with terror group ISIS-K, as they initially claimed. Malika died in a US drone strike in the courtyard of their family home in Afghanistan’s capital on August 29, along with nine other relatives, six of them children. The tragic answer is that she won’t return. She cries a lot, wondering when she is coming home. She misses playing with her younger sister Malika, he says. Every day for the past month, Emal Ahmadi’s 7-year-old daughter Hada has asked him the same thing: “Where is my sister?”
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