Pakistani Forces May Have Been Killed After Attacking U.S. Troops

The killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by U.S. airstrikes may have been a defensive action.

The facts have been slow to come out in the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers on Saturday, but new reports are surfacing that detail a different course of events than has been reported over the weekend.

A senior Pakistani defense official acknowledged that Pakistani troops fired first, sending a flare, followed by mortar and machine-gun fire, toward what he said was “suspicious activity” in the brush-covered area below their high-altitude outpost barely 500 yards from the border.

According to Afghan security officials, their commandos were engaged with U.S. Special Operations troops in a nighttime raid against suspected Taliban insurgents when they came under cross-border fire and called in an airstrike.[1]

While the U.S. has not yet responded to demands for an apology, the administration has expressed condolences for the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers.

Supporting the stance that perhaps U.S. troops were attacked over the border by Pakistani forces, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the United States General Martin Dempsey refused to apologize.

Gen. Dempsey says that while they Pakistanis “have reason to be furious that they have 24 soldiers dead and that what killed them was the ordinance of a partner,” as far as the U.S. having anything to apologize for: “absolutely not”.