The Department of Defense has declassified and released the video footage of the Aug. 29 botched drone strike in Afghanistan that killed 10 civilians.
The footage was released on Wednesday after the New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against U.S. Central Command.
Videos show roughly 25 minutes of footage from two MQ-9 Reaper drones capturing the courtyard and vehicle moments before, during, and after the missile hit the car, according to the New York Times.
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The strike occurred just two days before the U.S. military was set to depart Afghanistan after spending nearly 20 years there following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At the time of the strike, the Biden administration and Defense Department officials had publicly warned that the threat of a terrorist attack against the troops working to evacuate people at risk under the new Taliban regime was very high and they had thwarted a different attempt.
Those fears became a reality days earlier, on Aug. 26, when an ISIS-K militant detonated a suicide vest outside the airport gates where the evacuations were taking place, killing 13 U.S. service members and roughly 180 civilians.
DOD leaders initially declared the Aug. 29 strike successful, pointing to a secondary explosion as evidence to support their claim that there were explosives in the white Toyota Corolla that they tracked for eight hours before firing the missile. They later acknowledged that claim was incorrect and admitted that the target of the strike, Zemari Ahmadi, was an innocent aid worker without terrorist ties. He and nine others, many of whom were family members, were killed in the strike.
U.S. Air Force Inspector General Lt. Gen. Sami Said investigated the “righteous strike,” which is how Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, characterized it in the days afterward, and concluded there were no illegalities. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signed off on his conclusions.
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Pentagon spokesman John Kirby announced on Dec. 13 that no military personnel would be punished for the botched strike.
Ahmadi’s family remains in Afghanistan, though DOD is working to get them out of the country and to the United States.
