Two Explanations

We see many articles with this same or similar headline. This is from Monday April 7, 2008.

Breitbart: 16 Die in Strike Against Afghan Warlord

The people killed are described as part of a stronghold of insurgents.

U.S. and Afghan forces attacked a remote village in a mountainous region of northeastern Afghanistan following reports that an infamous insurgent leader was in the area, a governor said Monday. At least 16 people were killed.

At the same time we simultaneously read that most of the people killed are described as civilians and not militants, terrorists, or part of an insurgency.

Other provincial leaders say many civilians were killed in the hours- long clash, which included airstrikes in the remote villages of Shok and Kendal.

The competing claims (most killed were civilians versus all were terrorists) were impossible to reconcile because the fighting took part in a remote and dangerous part of the country. U.S. officials say that militants falsely claim civilian casualties as a strategy to weaken the international military coalition and the Afghan government.

The actual information that explains exactly who was killed may emerge in the future. A Google search using the term "military killed civilians" will yield many articles with this same dual explanation and many which support the claim that all killed were civilians.

It would be a beneficial study, to compare the initial account of who was killed to the later actual and factual account of who was killed. It would be good to know how many of these strikes actually kill terrorists versus those that actually killed innocent civilians.