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Agence France-Presse November 26, 2009 German military chief quits over deadly Afghan strike BERLIN" Germany's top general and a senior defence ministry official quit on Thursday over an air strike in Afghanistan in which NATO says as many as 142 people died. The resignations, announced in parliament by Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, followed press revelations that a military report about the September 4 strike was suppressed. Germany, with around 4,300 troops, is the third-largest contributor of foreign troops in Afghanistan after the United States and Britain. The mission is opposed by a majority of voters in Germany, polls indicate. Chief of staff General Wolfgang Schneiderhan "has released himself from his duties at his own request," zu Guttenberg said. "State secretary (Peter) Wichert is also taking responsibility." Zu Guttenberg, who took over from Franz Josef Jung only last month, confirmed that the report into the strike had been withheld and that he had been informed about it for the first time on Wednesday. It was unclear whether Jung knew about it. A German commander, Colonel Georg Klein, called in the NATO airstrike against two tanker trucks carrying fuel that had been seized by Taliban insurgents near Kunduz.... The Bild newspaper cited a confidential army video and report that the paper said showed that Klein could not rule out the presence of civilians around the trucks when he ordered the strike. .... Schneiderhan said on October 31, when a NATO report on the strike was published, that Klein had acted correctly. "I have no reason to doubt that German soldiers acted in the correct military fashion, given their mandate from the United Nations and the difficult operational situation," the general had said. The Bild report also added to pressure on the defence minister at the time, Jung, now labour minister, who said two days after the strike that according to his information "only Taliban terrorists" were killed. According to the mass circulation daily, only hours after the strike, commanders in Afghanistan had informed military HQ in Potsdam, Germany that there were two dead teenagers in Kunduz hospital as well as six people injured "aged between 10 and 20." A German military doctor also reported that there were two boys "aged around 14" with "open wounds" and "shrapnel injuries." .... In talks scheduled before the resignations, NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen was to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday before a joint news conference. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato Blog site: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/ To subscribe, send an e-mail to: [email protected] or [email protected] Daily digest option available. ============================== --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST --^---------------------------------------------------------------- This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bNM5nn.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [email protected] For Topica's complete suite of email marketing solutions visit: http://www.topica.com/?p=TEXFOOTER --^----------------------------------------------------------------
