A US drone strike that the Pentagon claimed had killed an Islamic State Khorasan suicide bomber on August 29 may have actually killed 43-year-old Zemari Ahmadi, an aid worker who was bringing water back to his family, according to a visual investigation by the New York Times.
Security camera footage shows Ahmadi loading up his 1996 Toyota Corolla with water canisters before setting off to bring it to his family. As Ahmadi drove through the streets of Kabul, an MQ-9 Reaper drone tracked his movements from the skies, as he had been flagged for possibly visiting an ISIS safe house and for driving a model of a car—the popular Toyota Corolla—that had also been used by ISIS to launch rocket attacks earlier in the day.
According to the NYT, Ahmadi worked for a California-based aid group, the Nutrition and Education International.
The drone strike was carried out because military officials suspected the car was carrying explosives to the Kabul airport, which had been attacked by a suicide bomber only days ago. While the Pentagon acknowledged that three civilians may have been killed, the NYT reported that 10 people were killed including several children, in a dense residential block.
It can be noted that early videos of the incident showed multiple children running away from the scene of the explosion. The US military had hailed the strike as "righteous" following initial reports that children had been killed, noting that a CENTCOM investigation into it was ongoing.
Ahmadi had been asked by his boss to collect a laptop on his way to work. Some of the multiple stops he made that day appeared to have flagged the attention of the US military, who claimed they had been intercepting communications between the sedan and an alleged ISIS safe house.
The NYT said those who rode with Ahmadi said he was simply picking up breakfast—which security cameras captured—and driving his co-workers to a Taliban-occupied police station where they were asking permission to distribute food to refugees. Security footage also shows Ahmadi with a hose filling empty plastic containers—as water deliveries had been stopped, he needed to do this to bring water back to his family.
His next move was tracked by the drone, with US officials claiming it saw him loading heavy packages into the car which they believed contained explosives.
The car’s passengers, however, told the NYT that they only had two laptops with them and the water-filled plastic containers.
As Ahmad pulled into his house, US officials ordered the airstrike, leading to the drone launching a Hellfire missile at his car. The officials claimed the drone scanned and saw only a single adult male greeting the vehicle, and they thereby assumed no women, children or non-combatants would be killed. His relatives, however, say several of his children and his brothers’ children came out to greet him.
The blast went on to kill Ahmad and nine of his family members, including seven children, according to the report.
The military at the time claimed a different death toll. "Two high-profile ISIS targets were killed, and one was wounded. And we know of zero civilian casualties," Maj Gen Hank Taylor, deputy director of the Joint Staff For Regional Operations, told reporters on Saturday.