ISLAMABAD — U.S. officials gave Pakistani soldiers the wrong location when asking for clearance to attack militants along the border last weekend, Pakistani military officials said Friday. The strike resulted in the deaths of 24 soldiers and a major crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad.
The claim was the latest in a series by mostly anonymous officials in both countries trying to explain what happened before and during last week’s bombing of two Pakistani border checkpoints by U.S. aircraft.
NATO and the U.S. have expressed regret for the loss of lives but have rejected Pakistani allegations it was a deliberate act of aggression. In retaliation for the raid, Islamabad has closed its western border to NATO supplies traveling into landlocked Afghanistan.
Thousands of Islamic extremists and other demonstrators took to the streets across the country after Friday prayers to protest the Nov. 26 strike. Some called on the army to attack the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials have told The Associated Press that last Saturday’s incident occurred when a joint U.S. and Afghan patrol requested backup after being hit by mortar and small-arms fire by Taliban militants. Before responding, the patrol first checked with the Pakistani army, which reported it had no troops in the area, they said.
U.S. officials say Pakistani troops had “given the go-ahead” for the strikes, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. This account would suggest that the Pakistanis were at least partly to blame for the deadly error.
A Pakistani military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information confirmed that the Americans provided a location for the planned strike. However, he said, the information arrived late, Pakistan never cleared the strike, and the coordinates provided were incorrect.
“Wrong information about (the) area of operation was provided to Pakistani officials a few minutes before the strike,” he said. “Without getting clearance from Pakistan side, the post had already been engaged by U.S. helicopters and fighter jets.”
U.S. officials at the border coordination center later “apologized privately to Pakistani officials for initially providing wrong information and the subsequent engagement of the post without prior information,” he said.
