US officials: Suspect in killings had head injury

Associated Press

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan

The soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians, most of them children, and burning their bodies was trained as a sniper and recently suffered a head injury in Iraq, U.S. officials said Monday.

The name of the suspect, a married, 38-year-old father of two, has not been released. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said he may face capital charges, and that the U.S. must resist pressure from Washington and Kabul to change course in Afghanistan because of anti-American outrage over the shooting.

“We seem to get tested almost every other day with challenges that test our leadership and our commitment to the mission that we’re involved in,” Panetta told reporters traveling with him to Krygzystan. “War is hell.”

A U.S. official said that during a recent tour of duty in Iraq, the suspect was involved in a vehicle accident and suffered a head injury. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation.

The vehicle accident was not a combat-related event, the official said. There was no available indication about the extent of the injury, or whether his injury could be linked to any abnormal behavior afterward.

Two U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the suspect had been trained as a sniper.

Sunday’s attack in southern Kandahar province unfolded in two villages near a U.S. base. Villager Mohammad Zahir recounted how an American soldier burst into his home in the middle of the night, searched the rooms, then dropped to a knee and shot his father in the thigh as he emerged from a bedroom.

“He was not holding anything — not even a cup of tea,” Zahir said.

The shootings come as anti-Americanism already is boiling over in Afghanistan after U.S. troops burned Qurans last month and a video of Marines urinating on alleged Taliban corpses was posted on the Internet in January.

If the attack unleashes another wave of anti-foreigner hatred, it could threaten the future of the U.S.-led coalition’s mission in Afghanistan. The events also have raised doubts among U.S. political figures that the long and costly war is worthy.

An enraged Afghan President Hamid Karzai called it “an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians” that cannot be forgiven. He demanded an explanation from Washington for the deaths, which included nine children and three women.

NATO and member countries said the slayings were a blow to the alliance’s efforts to cultivate trust but would not affect the time line to hand over security operations to Afghans by the end of 2014. The White House said U.S. objectives will not change because of the killings.