- Kandahar, Afghanistan - The U.S. military admitted on
Saturday that its soldiers in Afghanistan had burned the bodies of two
dead Taliban guerrillas and taunted insurgents about it, but had not meant
it as a desecration.
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- US Admits Burning Bodies
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- 11-27-5
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- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The
U.S. military said an investigation into the incident concluded the soldiers
had burned the bodies for "hygienic reasons" and said it would
reprimand two non-commissioned officers for calling out taunts about it
over a loudspeaker.
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- "Our investigation found
there was no intent to desecrate the remains, but only to dispose them
for hygienic reasons," U.S.-led forces operational commander, Major
General Jason Kamiya said.
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- The investigation stems from
footage shown on Australian television in a report which says the pictures
show U.S. soldiers watching as flames lick two charred corpses in the hills
above the village of Gondaz north of Kandahar.
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- It also shows two U.S. soldiers
reading messages they said had been broadcast over loudspeakers as propaganda.
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- "You allowed your fighters
to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to retrieve
their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed
you to be," read one soldier identified as psyops specialist Sgt.
Jim Baker.
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- The U.S. military said the soldiers
implicated in the burning incident, would face disciplinary action and
that the two junior officers who ordered the burning would be reprimanded
for showing a lack of cultural and religious understanding.
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- The incident has caused anger
among Afghans already upset with U.S.-led forces over accusations of mistreating
militant prisoners and using heavy handed tactics to hunt down the Taliban
and members of al Qaeda believed to be hiding there.
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- Kandahar is a former bastion
of the Taliban and has been a focus of their growing insurgency since U.S.-led
troops toppled the Islamic group's government in 2001.
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- The U.S. military leads some
20,000 troops, most of them Americans in Afghanistan, in the hunt for the
Taliban and their Islamic allies such as Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
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- This latest incident comes amid
rising violence in which more than 1,100 people, most of them militants,
but also nearly 60 U.S. soldiers have died in the Taliban-led insurgency
this year in the country, the bloodiest since U.S.-led forces overthrew
Taliban's government in 2001.
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