Washington: The United States will bear responsibility for last month’s American airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani troops, Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
While quoting US officials, the newspaper said that it will be an admission that is expected to embarrass the American military but will point to a way out of the deepening mistrust between the two countries.
It said that the military investigation has found that US and Afghan commandos incorrectly concluded there were no Pakistani forces in the Afghan border area where the coalition was conducting an operation on Nov. 26.
It added that the assessment cleared the way for an airstrike that devastated Pakistani positions.
“After the initial strike, the U.S. compounded its mistake by providing inaccurate data to a Pakistani military representative at a border-coordination center, missing an opportunity to stop the fighting, the WSJ quoted the US officials as saying.
The new report’s conclusions uphold key portions of Pakistan’s version of events. It also conflicts with some early US accounts, which said Pakistanis gave an all-clear that opened the way for the most deadly friendly-fire incident of the 10-year Afghanistan war.
The earlier US accounts were based on preliminary and incomplete debriefings of service members involved in the incident, officials said, while the complete investigation is based on computer records, radio reports and other documentation. US military investigators were denied access to Pakistani officials, including the representative at the border center, officials have said.
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