Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Friendly-Fire Mishap

A British aid worker, Linda Norgrove (36), was taken hostage by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan on September 26. Ms. Norgrove was working for an American aid organization called Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI). She left in an unarmored car to go to Kunar to review a project with three Afghan men; two drivers and a DAI employee. All were held hostage but the three Afghans were released while Ms. Norgrove was still being held in the remote and mountainous area. She was killed in a failed American rescue raid. The cause of her death is still being determined by autopsy (carried out by British officials) as well as a joint U.S.-U.K. investigation, officials said earlier that Ms. Norgrove was killed by her captors with a suicide bomber’s vest. U.S. special forces unit raided the area to free her. British Prime Minister David Cameron stated that the raid had been approved before the U.S. troops went in. There is a high possibility that Ms. Norgrove was accidentally killed by a grenade that was detonated by the U.S. special forces unit and not by the suicide vest. A review of surveillance footage, mission plan, communications, members of the rescue team, and video from the operations are all being investigated (led by U.S. Maj. Gen. Joseph Votel, chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command). The investigators said that there is conflicting evidence about whether Ms. Norgrove was killed by a U.S. grenade, an Afghan suicide vest, or both.  A suicide vest was found near her body but it was not clear if it had been detonated or if other explosives had killed her.