User:TomPointTwo/sandbox/1

Narang night raid
People of Narang district mourning for the students killed in the raid
Date December 27, 2009 Location Ghazi Khan Ghondi village, Narang District, Kunar province, Afghanistan Result 10 civilians killed, mostly underage.

The Narang night raid was an attack on the village Ghazi Khan on the night of December 27, 2009 which resulted in the death of ten, mostly underage, Afghan civilians. Both the status of the deceased and the affiliation of the attackers has been in dispute. NATO officials initially and erroneously asserted the dead were Taliban members killed in a firefight and were found with weapons and bomb making materials while some Afghan government officials and local tribal authorities asserted they were unarmed civilians. The American forces, which were claimed by the Afghan government to be involved, were not immediately identifiable and subsequent statements by NATO claimed that no US or NATO forces participated in any of the shootings. Some anonymous NATO sources suggested the shooters were Afghans acting on bad, or possibly malicious, intelligence.

Investigation

President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned the military operation and tasked a delegation led by Assadullah Wafa to investigate the killings. The investigation found that all of the victims were civilians and that eight of them were students between the ages of 11 and 17. A preliminary investigation by the United Nations reinforced Afghan claims that most of the dead were schoolboys. Assadullah Wafa who led the investigation, said: "It’s impossible they were al-Qaeda. They were children, they were civilians, they were innocent." While a joint Afghan-NATO investigation is ongoing Hamid Karzai offered 100,000 afghanis to the victim's families. Amid calls for prosecution of the attackers by the Afghan Security Council Karzai conceeded that he didn't know who the shooters were. NATO reiterated that the forces which conducted the attack were not under NATO command and were of a "non-military" nature. NATO did, though, concede it authorized the operation and apologized for doing so, admitting the dead were likely civilians and that the intelligence on which the authorization was based was faulty.

Reactions

Hundreds of Afghans rallied in the streets of Jalalabad and Kabul. Hundreds were university students and some were wearing blue headbands with the words: "Stop killing us!". They burned an effigy of U.S. President Barack Obama and chanted "Death to America" and "Obama! Obama! Take your soldiers out of Afghanistan!". Safiullah Aminzai, a student organiser, told AFP: "Our demonstration is against those foreigners who have come to our country." "They have not brought democracy to Afghanistan but they are killing our religious scholars and children." Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimy said Afghan troops had not taken part in the operation. The National Security Council chaired by President Hamid Karzai demanded that foreign troops responsible for the killing of the 10 civilians be handed over to the custody of the government. Farooq Abul Ajan who lost two children, four nephews and two brothers in the operation complained to President Hamid Karzai that no one has taken responsibility. He said "We wanted to know who it was."

See also

• Khataba raid
• Granai airstrike
• Azizabad airstrike
• Uruzgan helicopter attack
• Deh Bala wedding party bombing