The Raid on Khataba, also referred to as the raid on Gardez, was an incident in the

War in Afghanistan War in Afghanistan, Afghan war, or Afghan civil war may refer to: *Conquest of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great (330 BC – 327 BC) * Muslim conquests of Afghanistan (637–709) *Conquest of Afghanistan by the Mongol Empire (13th century), see al ...

in which five civilians, including two pregnant women and a teenage girl, were killed by U.S. forces on February 12, 2010. All were shot when

U.S. Army Rangers United States Army Rangers, according to the US Army's definition, are personnel, past or present, in any unit that has the official designation "Ranger". The term is commonly used to include graduates of the US Army Ranger School, even if t ...

Naylor, Sean. Relentless Strike. St. Martin's Press. New York, NY. 2015. page 369. raided a house in Khataba village, outside the city of

Gardez , settlement_type =City , image_skyline =gardez_paktya.jpg , imagesize = , image_caption =The Bala Hesar fortress in the center of Gardez City , image_flag = , flag_size = , image_sea ...

, where dozens of people had gathered earlier at the home to celebrate the naming of a newborn baby. Initially, U.S. Military officials implied the three women were killed prior to the raid by family members, reporting that the women had been found "tied up, gagged and killed." But investigators sent by the Afghan government reported, based on interviews and pictures of the scene, that the special operation forces removed bullets from the victims' bodies and cleaned their wounds as part of an attempted cover-up. NATO denied this allegation, and Afghan investigator Merza Mohammed Yarmand stated, "We can not confirm it as we had not been able to autopsy the bodies." The US military later admitted that the three women were killed by the special operations unit during the raid.

Response

NATO and the UN claimed to "not know of such an incident", but press leakage lead to a full investigation of the killings, but the bodies of the deceased were buried according to religious tradition before NATO could conduct autopsies to confirm the allegations. Insisting that the deaths were a "terrible mistake" Vice Admiral

William McRaven William Harry McRaven (born November 6, 1955) is a retired United States Navy four-star admiral who served as the ninth commander of the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) from August 8, 2011 to August 28, 2014. From 2015 to 2018, ...

, head of the JSOC, the command over the unit which conducted the raid, visited Khataba two months after the raid. He offered an apology and accepted responsibility for the deaths and made a traditional Afghan condolence offering of sheep. The soldiers that had conducted the raid faced no disciplinary measures since they had followed the "rules of engagement".

In media

* ''

Dirty Wars Dirty wars are offensives conducted by regimes against their dissidents, marked by the use of torture and forced disappearance of civilians. Dirty War may also refer to: Specific historical events * Dirty War (Argentina, 1974–1983), period of ...

'', a 2013 American documentary by

Jeremy Scahill Jeremy Scahill (born October 18, 1974) is an American investigative journalist, writer, a founding editor of the online news publication ''The Intercept,'' and author of '' Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army'', which ...

References

External links

* *Image
US special forces ‘tried to cover-up’ botched Khataba raid in Afghanistan
{{Afghanistan War, state=collapsed Massacres in Afghanistan 2010 in Afghanistan United States military scandals History of Paktia Province Massacres committed by the United States War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) casualties Civilian casualties in the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) February 2010 events in Afghanistan