‘It was a mistake.’ CENTCOM admits Aug. 29 drone strike killed civilians, not ISIS

When officials signed off Aug. 29 on a Hellfire strike to obliterate a white Toyota they had been monitoring for eight hours, the belief was that it contained ISIS fighters carrying a bomb intended for U.S. troops outside the Kabul airport. The head of U.S. Central Command announced Friday that they were very wrong.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie concurred with previous media reports that the strike had killed as many as 10 people, including seven children.

“This strike was taken in the earnest belief that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces and the evacuees at the airport, but it was a mistake,” he said, confirming that no ISIS fighters are believed to have been killed in the attack.

For days after the strike, Pentagon officials asserted that it had been conducted correctly, despite numerous civilians being killed, including children. The New York Times later raised doubts about that version of events, reporting that the driver of the targeted vehicle was a longtime employee at an American humanitarian organization and citing an absence of evidence to support the Pentagon’s assertion that the vehicle contained explosives.