An August 29 drone strike targeting terrorists in Afghanistan mistakenly killed innocent civilians, including children, Pentagon officials admitted Friday.
"It was a mistake," Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of US Central Command said.
The strike was launched after last month’s deadly suicide bombing near Kabul airport that killed 13 US military members and scores of civilians and was initially said to have prevented another attack
CENTCOM opened a formal investigation – called a 15-6 – after reports that the Hellfire drone killed as many as 10 civilians and had not prevented a terror strike, as US officials initially complained.
The 10 dead were all members of the same extended family, relatives told NBC News.
"They were 10 civilians," one member of the family, Emal Ahmadi, told NBC News earlier this month. He said his toddler Malika was among those killed. "My daughter ... she was 2 years old," he said.
The targeted car was driven by Ahmadi's cousin, Zemari Ahmadi, a technical engineer for a US aid company.
An investigation by the New York Times found some of Ahmadi's actions on the day of the strike may have been misinterpreted by US military surveillance, which was on high alert for a terror attack after the Islamic State Khorasan extremist group - ISIS-K - claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing outside the Kabul airport that killed 13 US military personnel and more than 110 Afghans.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said after the strike that officials had "very good intelligence" on the target and "at least one of those people that were killed was an ISIS facilitator."
"Were there others killed? Yes, there were others killed," he told reporters on Sept. 1, but “At this point, we think the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike."
President Joe Biden also initially touted the strike as a success and proof that the US could carry out "over the horizon" strikes from outside Afghanistan.
"We’ve shown that capacity just in the last week. We struck ISIS-K remotely, days after they murdered 13 of our service members and dozens of innocent Afghans," Biden said.