Germany's Top Soldier Resigns over (Afghanistan) Air Strike Accusations

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Source: Der Spiegel

Germany's Top Soldier Resigns over Air Strike Accusations

Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told the German parliament, the Bundestag, on Thursday morning that Bundeswehr Inspector General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the highest-ranking officer in Germany’s armed forces, had asked to be relieved of his official duties. Guttenberg said that Peter Wichert, a state secretary in the Defense Ministry, would also resign.

…German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg…largely confirmed allegations about the air strike that were published in the Thursday edition of the mass circulation newspaper Bild. He conceded that his predecessor Franz Josef Jung, who is now Germany’s labor minister, had withheld important information about the Sept. 4 air strike in Afghanistan which was ordered by a German colonel, Georg Klein.

Bild referred to "confidential" Bundeswehr reports about the attack and claimed to have obtained a video of the air strike from one of the participating US fighter jets. The air strike took place in the early hours of Sept. 4. At the request of the German Bundeswehr, US jets dropped bombs on two tanker trucks that had been seized by the Taliban and were stuck in a riverbed near Kunduz. According to NATO, up to 142 people were killed and wounded in the air strike, including 30 to 40 civilians.

Jung is accused of withholding information about the civilian casualties sustained in the attack. In the days after the air strike, he often repeated that there had been no civilian causalities and that the situation on the ground before the attack had been clear. He claimed it had been unambiguous that the people surrounding the tanker had all been Taliban militants.

Read more: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,663582,00.html