Afghan wedding guests killed again

In Afghanistan, wedding guests do not just die from bombs dropped by United States warplanes. Or from drone attacks, like happened also to wedding guests in Yemen.

They die from rockets as well.

From Associated Press:

Afghan police investigate fatal rocket attack on wedding party

At least 28 killed in apparent army strike day before Afghanistan takes full control of security at end of Nato combat operations

Lashkar Gah

Thursday 1 January 2015 10.16 GMT

Afghan police are investigating an apparent army rocket strike on a wedding party that killed at least 28 people, many of them women and children.

Police in southern Helmand province were looking into how soldiers came to fire a rocket at a house where a wedding was being celebrated late on Wednesday, the deputy provincial police chief, Bacha Gull, said.

The rocket appeared to have been fired from an army checkpoint near the house in Sangin district as guests waited for the bride to arrive, he said.

Police were “keeping an eye” on two army checkpoints to determine whether the soldiers manning them were engaged in a firefight with Taliban insurgents at the time or whether they fired the rockets arbitrarily. The strike wounded 51 people.

Gull said the funerals, usually held within 24 hours of a death, had been delayed to enable investigators to determine the cause of the rocket strike.

Sangin, in the poppy-producing Helmand river valley, has been the scene of fighting between government forces and Taliban in the last six months since US forces left.

The international mission to rid Afghanistan of insurgents under the leadership of the US and Nato officially ended on 31 December. Afghanistan takes full responsibility for its own security from Thursday.

Afghan government security forces and affiliated paramilitary units, developed under the US occupation, are engaged in a daily, ongoing campaign of terror against the country’s civilian population, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released this week, “Today We Shall All Die”: here.

SEC. OF DEFENSE NOMINEE SAYS HE’S WILLING TO KEEP TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN “[Ashton Carter] says he would consider changing the current plans for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of next year if security conditions worsen.” [AP]

The killing of three US Pentagon contractors at the hands of a uniformed Afghani Army soldier in Kabul last week casts considerable doubt on President Obama’s recent proclamation that America’s “combat mission in Afghanistan is over”: here.

Despite the official end to US combat operations on December 31, US commandos are intensifying their deadly “counterterrorism” operations in Afghanistan: here.

24 February 2015. Less than two months after President Barack Obama announced an end to US combat operations in Afghanistan, top Pentagon officials have made it clear that these murderous operations are not only continuing, they are escalating, while plans for the withdrawal of American troops are being reconsidered: here.

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