Raid on Khataba

The Raid on Khataba, also referred to as the raid on Gardez, was an incident in the War in Afghanistan in which five civilians, including two pregnant women and a teenage girl, were killed by U.S. forces on February 12, 2010. All were shot when U.S. Army Rangers raided a house in Khataba village, outside the city of Gardez, where dozens of people had gathered earlier at the home to celebrate the naming of a newborn baby. Initially, U.S. Military officials implied the three women were killed before the raid by family members, reporting that the women had been found "tied up, gagged and killed." But investigators sent by the Afghan government reported, based on interviews and pictures of the scene, that the special operation forces removed bullets from the victims' bodies and cleaned their wounds as part of an attempted coverup. NATO denied this allegation, and Afghan investigator Merza Mohammed Yarmand stated, "We can not confirm it as we had not been able to autopsy the bodies." The US military later admitted that the special operations unit killed the three women during the raid.