By ,
Published January 13, 2015
Questions continue to shroud a joint raid by U.S. Special Forces and Afghan commando teams that left Afghan civilians dead in country's town of Azizabad last month.
A United Nations investigation concluded that 90 Afghan civilians were killed in the August 22 raid - 60 children among them. The U.S. military, on the other hand, investigated and said 30 to 35 armed militants and 5 to 7 civilians were killed in the raid, that lasted more than four and a half hours.
Now, new video showing bodies of children and dozens of adults covered in blankets -- apparently taken by cell phones -- has been provided to the top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, as proof that a U.S.-led raid last month killed more than 90 civilians.
McKiernan has ordered the military investigation reviewed, and the Special Forces teams involved have been muzzled pending the new investigation.
Fox News cameraman Chris Jackson and FOX News contributor Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North happened to be embedded with the Marine Special Forces unit involved in the raid.
They witnessed the entire operation first hand and said that they did not see any non-combatants killed
• Click here to see a special report on the raid and the exclusive video from Afghanistan.
"I saw dead combatants, and they were wearing bandoliers and AK-47s," Jackson said. "I saw an Afghan woman and her child — they were wounded and they were being given medical aid at the scene and then taken to the Special Force hospital, where they received treatment."
Special military investigators showed the FOX team satellite photos of the graveyards near Azizabad taken before and after the raid.
In his blog on Aug. 29, North wrote: "Though only about 15 new graves were evident in nearby cemeteries — and no local civilians had sought medical treatment for wounds — the number of noncombatant casualties allegedly inflicted in the raid continued to rise."
"I've worked in war zones and disaster areas for a long time … so I'm used to seeing large numbers of dead people," Jackson said, "I did not see this in Azizabad. I went through the rubble, I went through the buildings, the main objectives, and what I saw is primarily enemy combatants killed. What I saw matched the number of the U.S. Army figure of how many people were killed … I find it very hard to believe that there were that large number of civilians that were killed on the scene and I missed it," said Jackson.
The U.S. military, however, has enough concerns about the Afghan claims and the new cell phone video evidence presented to it that it is reopening the investigation to see what really happened in Azizabad.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/embedded-reporters-dispute-conflicting-reports-of-afghan-raid