Afghanistan: Villagers threatened by U.S. troops before Kandahar massacre

While the official NATO story is that the Kandahar killings were the work of one lone soldier, the Afghans insist that there were a number of soldiers. Some eyewitnesses report seeing a single soldier others a number of soldiers. Some accounts report them as being drunk.

Now a new report from Mokhoyan one of the targeted villages indicates that U.S. soldiers threatened the villagers just days before the attack.

Villagers report that U.S. troops rounded up all the men from the villages after a roadside bombing. They lined them up against a wall and told them that they would “pay a price” for the bombing.

Villagers said the bombing was on March 7 or 8th. Some stories say that the one soldier suspected in the attack Robert Bales was upset that a friend had a lost a leg in a bomb attack. Perhaps the attack was this one near the village.

As usual the military would neither confirm nor deny that there were bomb attacks in the area. They had nothing to say about the threats claimed by the villagers.

The reports of the threats give at least some support to the Afghan view that there was an organised group of soldiers involved in the attacks not a lone soldier. However, it also supports Robert Fisk's view that the attack was based upon a desire for revenge not mental illness. For more see this article.