Army sergeant suspected of killing 16 Afghan civilians

After more than a decade, the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan might have its ” title=”Reuters reports” target=”_blank”>Reuters reports:

One or more U.S. soldiers shot dead 16 civilians, including nine children according to Afghan officials, in Afghanistan’s south on Sunday in what witnesses described as a massacre.

NATO said they had detained one U.S. soldier in the killings. U.S. officials said the soldier was a staff sergeant.

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Afghan officials gave varying accounts of the number of shooters involved in the incident. Karzai’s office released a statement quoting a villager as saying “American soldiers woke my family up and shot them in the face.”

Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid said a U.S. soldier had burst into three homes near his base in the middle of the night, killing a total of 16 people including 11 people in the first house.

A spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the U.S. soldier “walked back to the base and turned himself into U.S. Forces this morning”, adding there had been no military operations taking place in the area when the incident occurred.

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