WASHINGTON: US military's Central Command in its investigation has revealed that it took 45 minutes for a NATO operations center in Afghanistan to notify a senior allied commander attack on Pakistani check-posts in Mohmand Agency, a report published in 'The New York Times' said.
NYT report stated that once alerted, the commander immediately halted American attacks on two Pakistani posts. But by then, military communications between the two sides had sorted out a chain of errors and the shooting had already stopped.
The delay raises questions about whether a faster response could have spared the lives of some Pakistani soldiers, the report said.
An unclassified version of the 30-page report, released Monday by the military’s Central Command, also revealed for the first time that an American AC-130 gunship flew two miles into Pakistani territory to return fire on troops that had attacked a joint American-Afghan ground patrol just across the border in Afghanistan.
The NYT report further stated that American officials said the first allied mistake was that NATO had not informed Pakistan about the patrol, so the Pakistani soldiers would not have known to expect allied forces nearby. NATO and Pakistani forces are supposed to inform each other about operations on the border precisely to avoid this kind of mistake.
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