WASHINGTON – The suspect in the killings of at least 16 Afghan civilians was a staff sergeant who arrived in Afghanistan on December 3rd, the US Army said in a memo to members of Congress.
Villagers in southern Afghanistan buried men, women and children shot dead in their homes yesterday by the US soldier, as the Army Criminal Investigative Command probed the killings.
The suspect was with the 2-3 Infantry, 3rd Striker Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division, and his home station was Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, according to the memo obtained yesterday.
The suspect, whose name has not been released, was being held in pretrial confinement by the US military in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city.
The soldier was on his first tour of duty in Afghanistan after three tours in Iraq, Pentagon spokesman George Little said.
The suspect is 38 and married with two children, ABC News said, citing a US official.
He was deemed fit for duty after suffering a mild traumatic brain injury in the past and had marital difficulties after his last tour of duty in Iraq, the network said.
“What we know is that a US soldier left his forward operating base in the night hours from Saturday into Sunday, went into the nearby villages and opened fire on civilians,” according to Brig Gen Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for the Nato-led coalition in Afghanistan.
The attack happened in Panjwai, a plain stretching southwest from Kandahar city that is densely dotted with villages whose mullahs helped found the Taliban movement in 1994.
The district has remained a Taliban stronghold since Nato’s International Security Assistance Force took control in heavy fighting in 2006.
Before opening fire, the soldier had to walk about a kilometre from his base, said Habibullah Khan (36), whose home was attacked. “The soldier killed four of my family members including my wife, sisters and a baby nephew,” he said.
“I was out of the district, in the city of Kandahar, but when I came back I saw blood and all four people had been killed in their beds.”
The attacker gathered 11 of those he killed into one home and set the bodies on fire, according to Lal Mohammed, an elder of Alokozay, who spoke by phone.
After the attack, the soldier returned to his base and surrendered, Jacobson said.
US officials say they believe the attack was an “isolated incident”, Mr Little told reporters at the Pentagon today.
President Barack Obama called Afghan president Hamid Karzai “to express his shock and sadness” and pledged “to hold fully accountable anyone responsible”, according to a White House statement yesterday.
Farming families in Zangabad, a grape-growing village 35km southwest of Kandahar, met in mosques today to hold postburial prayers for relatives killed by the soldier, according to Mr Khan.
The killings threaten to reignite protests against US forces and complicate efforts by the Obama administration to arrange an orderly withdrawal over the next two years. – (Bloomberg)