A U.S. Army staff sergeant snapped in Afghanistan on Sunday and went on a murder rampage, breaking into homes in the middle of the night and shooting the occupants — mostly little kids — as they slept.
He killed at least 16 villagers, including three women and nine children, in three homes, Afghan officials said. Five people survived with gunshot wounds.
The military did not release the sergeant’s name, but ABC News said he is a 38-year-old married father of two from the Fort Lewis Army Base in Washington State who arrived in Afghanistan in December after serving three tours in Iraq. He is assigned to support a special operations unit, either the Green Berets or Navy SEALs.
The soldier walked off his base to two nearby villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province, where he moved methodically from house to house.
Villagers said they huddled in terror as he tried door after door, then broke into three homes on his murderous mission.
A survivor, a wounded 15-year-old boy named Rafiullah, told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the soldier woke his family and began shooting them one by one.
At one house, the soldier piled 11 bodies — including the corpses of four little girls — and set them on fire, witnesses said.
Once finished with his killing spree, the soldier, whose motives were not immediately known, walked back to base and surrendered, officials said.
After the massacre, one villager, Gul Bushra, opened a flowered blanket to reveal her 2-year-old’child’s body. “Was this child Taliban?” she asked.
As the bodies of the dead were taken away, villagers crowded the streets, and one man wiped away tears with the edge of his shawl.
The massacre was the worst attack on civilians by the U.S. military since the Afghan war began in 2001 — and one that is sure to further inflame tensions created by the mistaken burning of Korans at a military base and a video of Marines urinating on corpses.
“I cannot explain the motivation behind such callous acts,” Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, the deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement.
Eleven men from Fort Lewis were court-martialed last year after forming a “kill team” to hunt men for sport. At least three unarmed men were slain with grenades and machine guns.
The White House said President Obama called Karzai from his car on the way to his daughter Sasha’s basketball game to express shock and sadness at the killing of innocents.
“This incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan,” Obama said in a statement.
“This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians, and cannot be forgiven,” Karzai said.
The Afghan Taliban were quick to vow revenge against U.S. soldiers still posted in Afghanistan.
“We are deeply concerned by the initial reports of this incident and are monitoring the situation closely,” said White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.
‘Fatal hammer blow’ to U.S. mission
Experts said what appeared to be the actions of a lone madman had undone years of work.
“This is a fatal hammer blow on the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan,” David Cortright, the director of policy studies at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, told The Associated Press.
“Whatever sliver of trust and credibility we might have had following the burnings of the Koran is now gone.”
On “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he understood the sorrow in Afghanistan.
“I also understand that we should not forget that the attacks on the United States of America on 9/11 originated in Afghanistan,” he said. “If Afghanistan dissolved into a situation where the Taliban were able to take over or a chaotic situation, it could easily return to an Al Qaeda base for attacks on the United States of America.”
The Pentagon says 1,892 American service members have died in Afghanistan since 2001.
The worst U.S. military atrocity in the past decade took place in Iraq in 2005, when 24 unarmed civilian men, women and children were massacred by eight U.S. Marines in the city of Haditha. Only one Marine was convicted of any crime, and his punishment was a demotion and a pay cut.
With News Wire Services