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U.S. Admits Kabul Drone Strike Killed Only Civilians; Taliban Call on Boys over Grade Six to Return to School; U.S. Authorizes Sanctions after Reports of Atrocities in Tigray. Aired 12-12:15a ET

Aired September 18, 2021 - 00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hello and welcome to CNN NEWSROOM, everyone, I am Michael Holmes, appreciate your company.

Well from righteous, from righteous strike to a tragic mistake, the U.S. military now admits it killed only civilians and no ISIS-K fighters when it targeted a car in Kabul last month.

Ten people died in the drone strike, including seven children. Up until Friday, the U.S. maintained at least one of them was a terrorist linked to an imminent threat against evacuation efforts at the airport. Now a top U.S. general says they got it wrong.

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GEN. KENNETH MCKENZIE, COMMANDER, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed. This strike was taken in the earnest belief that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces and the evacuees at the airport.

But it was a mistake. And I offer my sincere apology. As a combatant commander, I am fully responsible for this strike and its tragic outcome.

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HOLMES: A CNN investigation had already cast doubts on the original narrative. Anna Coren has more on the reversal and what we are learning more about the victims. And we are warning you, some of the footage you are going to see is graphic.

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ANNA COREN, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: The U.S. military has admitted that wrong intelligence led to the killing of 10 innocent Afghan civilians, including seven children following a drone strike in Kabul, almost three weeks ago, on what they thought at the time was an ISIS-K target. Instead, they killed a 43-year-old aid worker and father of seven,

Zamarai Ahmadi, who they now admit had no affiliation whatsoever to any terror network.

CNN carried out an investigation, speaking to more than 2 dozen people, including family members, colleagues and bomb experts, reviewing CCTV footage and retracing Zamarai's steps that day, raising serious doubts about the U.S. military's version of the events.

CENTCOM commander General Kenneth McKenzie called it a, quote, "tragic mistake," saying he takes full responsibility, offering his sincere and profound condolences to the family.

He said they had received 60 different intelligence reports of an imminent attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport. A U.S. official earlier told us they had been monitoring intelligence from an ISIS safe house.

The drone strike came just days after an attack on the airport, when an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghans.

Based on what McKenzie said was a good lead, they followed Zamarai's car as went by his daily routine, believing he was loading explosives into the car when he, in fact, was lifting containers of water into his vehicle.

When he pulled into his family compound, a U.S. official with knowledge of the operation told CNN the drone operators watched the car for 4-5 minutes before taking the shot. Then they realized there were three children in the compound.

We have now learned that, with further analysis, the U.S. admits there were even more children in the vicinity of the drone strike. A total of seven children were killed; three were toddlers.

General McKenzie said there will be a review of policies and procedures that led to the strike, that took the lives of 10 innocent civilians, and that they are looking at compensation for the family -- Anna Coren, CNN, Hong Kong.

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HOLMES: Now rights for Afghan women seem to be disappearing by the day, since the Taliban took over the country. A building in Kabul designated as Afghanistan's ministry of women's affairs, well, that's now home to the ministry of the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice; under the Taliban, the same feared ministry from the previous rule of the country.

Now that's according to that sign, there posted outside the building on Friday. The Taliban also calling for boys over grade 6 to report to school over the weekend. That announcement though making no mention of female students that age, leaving many girls to fear they won't be allowed back at school.

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HOLMES: Now the AUKUS security agreement announced 3 days ago has blown up into a pretty serious diplomatic firestorm among staunch Western allies. The French so enraged, they have now recalled their ambassadors to both Australia and the U.S., a rare diplomatic move and exceedingly so, when it evolves allies.

And, as the Biden administration pivots hard toward Asia, some European allies are wondering if they might be next. CNN's Melissa Bell with the latest from Paris.

MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It was an extraordinary move announced by France on Friday night and one that is normally reserved for adveries (ph), recalling from both Washington and Canberra all of its ambassadors.

This after the announcement on Wednesday that the United States, United Kingdom and Australia had entered into a new strategic partnership deal that essentially meant not only that France is going to lose out on a 65 billion euro submarine deal with Australia but perhaps, more importantly, that Europe had been kept entirely in the dark about a deal, an arrangement that essentially changed its own positioning in the world.

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BELL (voice-over): And in the very week when Ursula van der Leyen, the president of the European Commission has been, in her state of the union, announcing that, as a united Europe, the bloc now stood ready to play its own important role on the world stage.

The fact that it was not kept informed is, it seems, what has hurt the most. This was the week also when France and the United States, each other's oldest allies, were preparing to mark the 240th anniversary since the Chesapeake Bay routing of the British by the French that had ultimately led to American independence.

More muted celebrations but this latest sebri (ph) shows that in the end the French have taken extremely badly the idea of what the French foreign minister has described as not simply a change of heart but the lack of communication that was characteristic of the Trump administration, not what Europe had been imagining, had been expecting, from Biden's -- Melissa Bell, CNN, Paris.

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HOLMES: Algeria's state-run media is reporting that longtime former president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, has died. No cause of death given but Bouteflika has rarely been seen in public since having a stroke in 2013. He ruled the North African nation for 20 years but resigned in 2019 after mass protests dissuaded him from seeking a fifth term.

Bouteflika is generally credited with restoring stability to Algeria after the bloody civil war of the 1990s. Abdelaziz Bouteflika was 84.

In the United States, President Joe Biden has signed an executive order, authorizing sanctions against the warring parties in Ethiopia's Tigray region. This follows reporting from CNN's Nima Elbagir that exposed mass detentions, sexual violence and killings that bear the hallmarks of genocide.

We get more now from Nima on how the U.S. is reacting.

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NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The White House has issued an executive order, broadening the sanctions available to it and bringing to an end or working to bring to an end the crisis in Ethiopia's Tigray region.

Now, this may sound like more of the same telegraphing of concern that has been much criticized by human rights activists, and Tigrayan advocates when it comes to the U.S.' handling of the crisis in Tigray.

But actually, what this does for the first time is place a timeframe around the resolution of the crisis in Tigray. U.S. officials and lawmakers tell us that this is a matter of weeks, that if resolution is not seen, or at least not -- at least the process of resolution begun, then they are looking to implement targeted sanctions against specific individuals across all the parties to the conflict.

So that's the Ethiopian government, the Amhara regional forces, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, and members of the Tigrayan fighters on the ground and the Eritrean forces.

This comes, we're told by congressional contacts, after our recent reporting. Congressional contacts tell us that our recent investigation triggered urgency in Congress among lawmakers, and that, in turn, caused them to ratchet the pressure on the administration about our investigation.

And I must warn viewers that this is difficult to watch. But it's so important. These graphic images we're showing you evidence of torture, execution, and detention on a mass scale in the town of Humera.

It was evidence that pointed to we found a methodical campaign which bore all the hallmarks of genocide.

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ELBAGIR: We were also able to cross-reference witness testimony and the analysis of satellite imagery to pinpoint at least seven locations here within Humera. That -- where the site of mass detention, and two outside of Humera.

We are now hearing from the Ethiopian government their response to this ruling, to this executive order on the part of the Biden administration and they are rejecting it.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's office issued this open letter, saying, "We have seen the consequences and aftermaths of hurried and rash decisions made by various U.S. administrations." They go on to say, "It is essential to point out that Ethiopia will

not succumb to the consequences of pressure engineered by disgruntled individuals."

What does that actually mean on the ground?

Well, given that the Tigray region has run out of humanitarian resources, humanitarian aid in situ for humanitarian agencies to use currently, the humanitarian actors on the ground are reliant on aid, trucked into Tigray.

The U.N. have told us that, within the last six weeks, less than five days worth of aid, trucks carrying less than five days' worth of aid has been allowed into the region. And given the hundreds of thousands of people within Tigray are currently in famine-like conditions, as the U.N. describes it.

Any delay, any refusal or rebuttal on the part of Ethiopian -- of the Ethiopian government and its allies who control the access of aid into the Tigray region will have dire consequences for the people on the ground in the region.

The hope is that the Ethiopian government finds a way to cooperate with the international community and with the United States, at the very least on this humanitarian access aspect of the executive order. That's what we're hearing from so many humanitarian agencies and actors on the ground -- Nima Elbagir, CNN, London.

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HOLMES: A major overhaul for England's international COVID travel rules. The U.K. government says it is simplifying its controversial traffic light system for a simple red list of no-go destinations. It is also getting rid of COVID tests for fully vaccinated travelers heading to England from countries on its safe list.

Now the move goes into effect in just over 2 weeks, on October 4 but does not cover international arrivals to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Thanks for spending part of your day with me, I am Michael Holmes, please stay tuned for "MARKETPLACE AFRICA."