US pays families of Afghan massacre victims

The US military on Sunday paid the relatives of Afghans slain in the March 11 shooting rampage $50,000 for each fatality, Afghan and US officials said. At a small ceremony in Kandahar, the US also paid $11,000 for every injured villager, said the deputy provincial council chief, Agha Lalai Dastagiri. A US official confirmed the figures. While the US has charged US Army Staff Sgt Robert Bales with 17 counts of murder in the attack, the villagers in Kandahar and the provincial authorities are aware of only 16 fatalities. Six villagers are hospitalised. "Such payments are customary in Afghan culture when a wrong like this is done," a US official said. Normally, the US military pays much smaller amounts to Afghan families when it mistakenly kills civilians. The US official said the larger "payments are commensurate with this tragedy." The shootings, in the Panjway district of southern Kandahar province, have inflamed Afghan public opinion, causing President Hamid Karzai to demand a curb on US military operations in Afghan villages. The families of the victims have repeatedly said they will refuse compensation money from the US They said they demand an open trial of Sgt. Bales and any accomplices, and insist on applying the death penalty. The villagers and Afghan officials say they believe Sgt Bales wasn't acting alone, a claim the US military denies. Dastagiri, the provincial council deputy chief, said the payments distributed to the families Sunday were not intended to compensate for their loss, and didn't end the villagers' claims. "This is not compensation money but aid money to help them survive and improve their lives," he said. "We still demand the trial of the perpetrators. This is the demand of the entire people." US Army Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, a military spokesperson in Kabul, said that whenever the military makes financial restitution to Afghans, "it is usually a matter of agreement that the terms of the settlement remain confidential" because "it is in most cases a sensitive topic for those who have suffered loss." Mohammed Wazir, a farmer from Panjway who lost 11 family members in the March 11 rampage, declined to comment on the payments. Fellow villager Mullah Baran, whose brother was killed in the shooting spree, also declined comment. "We don't have anything to say," he said. The families targeted in the massacre were among Afghanistan's poorest even by Afghan standards. The Wazir family, for example, couldn't afford a door in their mud compound, using a piece of cloth instead.Mr. Karzai's government has alreadygiven the families $2,000 for every relative killed, and $1,000 for each injured. Bloodshed, meanwhile, continued in Kandahar and other parts of Afghanistan. The Kandahar provincial government said Sunday that seven Afghan policemen, a coalition service member and an Afghan interpreter were killed as they were trying to defuse an explosive device in the Kohak village of Arghandab district. Arghandab, Panjway, and the neighboring Zhari districts were the focus of the US troop surge in 2010, and are often cited by the US military as success stories. Separately, Afghan officials said Sunday, six Afghan army soldiers were killed when their patrol was ambushed in the western province of Farah. On Saturday, Italy said that one of its soldiers was killed in a separate insurgent mortar attack in the province.