The
United States admitted significant errors were made in carrying out the airstrike, stating "the inability to discern the presence of civilians and avoid and/or minimize accompanying collateral damage resulted in the
unintended consequence of civilian casualties".[7][8][9]
The Afghan government has said that around 140 civilians were killed, of whom 22 were adult males and 93 were children.[3][4] Afghanistan's top rights body has said 97 civilians were killed, most of them children.[3] Other estimates range from 86 to 147 civilians killed.[7][10] An earlier probe by the US military had said that 20–30 civilians were killed along with 60–65 insurgents.[3] A partially released American inquiry stated "no one will ever be able conclusively to determine the number of civilian casualties that occurred".[7]The Australian has said that the airstrike resulted in "one of the highest civilian death tolls from Western military action since foreign forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001".[11]
Airstrike video
A
Combat Camera video of the airstrike was made by the bomber aircraft involved. When the
Pentagon investigation on the incident was released in 2009, it did not include the video.[7][12]
By May 2010,
WikiLeaks had an encrypted copy of the video it had received from then U.S. Army Specialist
Chelsea Manning and was attempting to decrypt it.[13][14][15] In a March 2013 statement,
Julian Assange disputed prior news reports claiming WikiLeaks had been unable to decrypt the file and alleged that the video "documented a massacre, a
war crime."[16]
Assange said WikiLeaks no longer had the video due to former spokesperson
Daniel Domscheit-Berg deleting it and other files when he left WikiLeaks in September 2010 and a Swedish Intelligence operation conducted in September 2010 in which other copies of the video were also lost.[16][17][18]
Gregory, Thomas (26 Apr 2012). "Potential Lives, Impossible Deaths: Afghanistan, Civilian Casualties and the Politics of Intelligibility". International Feminist Journal of Politics. 14 (3): 327–347.
doi:
10.1080/14616742.2012.659851.
S2CID142864199.