The Marine Corps has relieved the commander of its first deployed special operations company, which was expelled from Afghanistan after members shot at civilians in response to an ambush. The Afghan government said 10 civilians were killed.
Maj. Cliff Gilmore, a spokesman for Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC), confirmed in response to questions from The Examiner that the commander, a major, was relieved. Gilmore said the company’s senior enlisted Marine was also removed on Tuesday.
He said the command’s top officer, Maj. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, was this week in the Central Command theater, where the company remains, but he did not know if the general visited the ousted unit.
U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., took the extraordinary step of pulling the 120-Marine company out of Afghanistan after a March 4 firefight in Nangarhar Province on the Pakistan border. A second Marine officer told The Examiner that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had complained about the unit and that U.S. commanders in Afghanistan decided the company needed to leave.
In the incident, a company patrol was ambushed by a suicide car bomber on Highway 1 near Jalalabad. The explosion slightly wounded one Marine. The patrol became involved in a firefight and rushed from the scene, firing at Afghans along the route.
Afghan eyewitnesses told the Associated Press at the time that Marines fired at civilians. The government said 10 civilians were killed. Central Command has assigned an officer to investigate the shooting. The province is a crossing point for Taliban and al Qaeda.
A year ago, the Pentagon made the Marine Corps a new part of U.S. Special Operations Command, a shift approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s who wanted to expand the command to fight the war on terror. The MARSOC was set up at Camp Lejeune, N.C. where it is assembling nine combat companies.
The expelled company was the first Marine Corps special operations unit to deploy in combat. A second one is scheduled to deploy in the coming weeks from Camp Pendleton, Calif.
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