Emal Ahmadi hasn’t slept since Sunday. Unable to walk or eat, he weeps uncontrollably. His toddler was killed after a US drone incinerated a car inside a residential compound in a working-class neighbourhood Khwaja Burgh, on the outskirts of Kabul.
Mallika, meaning ‘queen’ in Arabic, was his queen. Distraught, he asked: “Can America give me back my Malika?” in a phone call with The Independent.
It was 5pm Kabul time when the missile hit. It instantly killed Zemari and nine other family members. His three sons Zameer, 20, Faisal and Farzad, 10, died. Zemari’s siblings Emal and Ramal Ahmadi and their wives survived the attack – but their children, Armin,4, Benjamin, 3, Ayat, 2, and Malika, 3 were killed.
Jennifer Gibson Reprieve’s project lead for extrajudicial killings said “it is the same US drone programme that has been run in secret and without accountability in multiple countries for over a decade now.” This incident is emblematic of what has been happening in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, for the last decade, said Ms Gibson. Read the full story in The Independent.
