KABUL, Afghanistan: Witness: Anne Smedinghoff, other Americans killed in Afghan bombing were on foot, lost

About as intelligent as peace corps volunteers.

 

B

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/10/v-fullstory/3336036/witness-anne-smedinghoff-other.html

 

Witness: Anne Smedinghoff, other Americans killed in Afghan bombing were on
foot, lost

Anne Smedinghoff, a 25-year-old diplomat from River Forest, Illinois, was
among five Americans killed on Saturday, April 6, 2013, in an explosion in
Afghanistan, according to her family and the U.S. State Department.

Anne Smedinghoff, a 25-year-old diplomat from River Forest, Illinois, was
among five Americans killed on Saturday, April 6, 2013, in an explosion in
Afghanistan, according to her family and the U.S. State Department.

Chuck Berman / MCT

By Jay Price and Rezwan Natiq

McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A promising young U.S. Foreign Service officer, three
American soldiers and a civilian government contractor who were killed
Saturday in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan probably wouldn't have been
close to the blast if they hadn't gotten lost while walking to the school
where they were to participate in a book-donation ceremony, according to an
Afghan television reporter who was with them and was wounded in the attack.

Ahmad Zia Abed, a reporter for Shamshad TV, said he and a videographer from
his station were among about a dozen people, including the officer, Anne
Smedinghoff, 25, whom American soldiers were escorting on the 200-yard walk
from the local headquarters of the U.S.-led Provincial Reconstruction Team
to what they thought was the school. A man at the gate said they had the
wrong place, though, that this was the provincial agriculture institute.

The group retraced its steps to the American base to figure out what to do
next, Abed said. The entrance to the base is just a few feet from the
street, he said, and just as they reached it, walking more or less in single
file, something slammed into his back and he staggered forward. Disoriented,
he saw a car wheel roll past him.

"At first I thought that a car had left the road and struck me," he said.
"But then I turned around and saw it had been a bomb."

Abed's account of the bombing, the most detailed to surface since the
explosion, raises new questions about the circumstances that led to the
deadliest combat incident in Afghanistan for Americans this year and
contradicts what relatives of the victims have said they were told - that
Smedinghoff and her military escorts had been in an armored vehicle when it
was rammed by a suicide vehicle. Smedinghoff was the first American diplomat
to die in Afghanistan during more than 11 years of warfare here.

The FBI has opened an investigation into the attack, said a U.S. government
official who declined to be identified because of that investigation. He
confirmed Wednesday night that the party had been on foot, and said earlier
reports that they were in a vehicle convoy were inaccurate.

Being on foot would have made the group particularly vulnerable to the
effects of the explosion. Abed was interviewed Wednesday at his home in
Kabul, where was recovering from surgery to remove chunks of the suicide
vehicle from his left hand and the back of his right knee.

Improvised bombs sometimes aren't strong enough to pierce an armored
vehicle. Or they're designed or built so poorly or triggered in such a way
that they don't result in serious casualties. When they explode, though,
anyone on foot nearby is most at risk. That was true in this case.

Local officials said the bomber was parked outside the hospital, waiting for
the provincial governor to drive by on his way to the school. As his convoy
passed, the bomb went off. While some in the governor's convoy were wounded,
none was killed. The only Afghan to die in the blast was a doctor, also on
foot, who was outside a nearby hospital.

Abed said he was near the front of the group, closer to the U.S. base and
farther from the road than most in the group were. That saved his life.
Those behind him took the worst of the blast. Among them was Smedinghoff.

Smedinghoff's father told journalists in the United States that he'd been
told she was in a vehicle and the bomber either rammed it or detonated his
explosives nearby. But Abed said she'd been his media escort all the way
from Kabul to Qalat, the capital of Zabul province, and that he was certain
she was on foot.

The immediate aftermath of the blast was chaotic, Abed said. He thinks he
heard a second blast - local officials have said an attacker detonated a
suicide vest - before he staggered a few more steps, still not feeling any
pain.

"When I moved toward the base, everywhere was full of dust and smoke and I
couldn't see anywhere, and people were screaming and most of them injured
and screaming so loudly," he said. "I just at a glance could manage to see
the vehicles of the governor on the other side.

"I saw some of the people hurt around me but I didn't see all of them,
because I was so sad and shocked and couldn't know what to do. I only saw a
few yelling for help, but I couldn't see much."

An American soldier yelled at Abed to get down, so he dropped to the ground.
Seconds later another soldier helped him find better cover behind a mound of
sand. Then he and the other wounded were rapidly moved inside the base.

His videographer, who'd been closer to the bomb, took shrapnel in his legs
and arms, and their camera and tripod were destroyed.

The worst wounded were put in one room, and those who weren't critical
cases, such as the two TV journalists, in another. He said he'd watched as
Americans pulled white cloths over the dead, including Smedinghoff.

"I met them alive, and then I saw their bodies," he said, suddenly looking
away. "I can't forget them now, and I will never forget them."

After U.S. medics stopped the bleeding from his wounds and bandaged them, an
ambulance took Abed, the videographer and another wounded Afghan to a local
hospital, where a surgeon removed the shrapnel.

Later, U.S. aircraft brought him back to Kabul.

He said he was struggling with his memory. "It's like the only thing I
remember is that incident," he said. "I can't concentrate, and I always
think about the screaming of people and those who were killed around me."

The Saturday visit to Qalat involved not just the Afghan journalists and
Smedinghoff, but also several State Department officials from the embassy in
Kabul as well as U.S. diplomats based in Kandahar.

Abed said he was unsure who the most senior diplomats present were, and the
State Department so far has declined to say.

All the people in the group were wearing Kevlar helmets and body armor when
they left the base for their failed trip to find the school. Before they
walked off the base, U.S. officials from the Kandahar consulate had given a
presentation on the advances that the U.S.-led coalition had helped bring to
the area, Abed said. At the top of the list: much-improved security.

Zabul province, though, is hardly safe. Over the course of the war, more
than 100 coalition troops have been killed there. According to statistics
provided by a U.S. military representative who works there, the number of
"significant activities" involving insurgents - such as attacks and bombs
exploding or being discovered before they do - has increased each year since
2009.

That raises the question of why so many State Department civilians had been
taken to Qalat. Ordinarily, U.S. diplomats aren't allowed to travel much
outside their diplomatic posts.

Among the most seriously wounded was another State Department officer, Kelly
Hunt, 33, a former staff member of Tennessee's Knoxville News Sentinel who
was serving as a public diplomacy officer in Kandahar. An aunt told the
newspaper that Hunt had been taken to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional
Medical Center in Germany for surgery and that doctors there had medically
induced a coma and removed part of her skull to help fight swelling in her
brain.

Three other wounded State Department employees are being treated outside the
country, according to the department, which declined to name them.

A Pentagon statement identifying the three soldiers killed by the explosion
said they'd died in Kandahar, apparently an indication that they'd been
evacuated by air while still alive. They were Staff Sgt. Christopher M.
Ward, 24, of Oak Ridge, Tenn., Spc. Wilbel A. Robles-Santa, 25, of Junco,
Puerto Rico, and Spc. Delfin M. Santos Jr., 24, of San Jose, Calif.

Like Smedinghoff, who was in her second diplomatic posting, they'd been in
tough places before. Ward, the youngest of 17 children, had joined the Army
in November 2005 and was already on his third deployment. Robles-Santa,
who'd joined the Army in October 2010, and Santos, who'd enlisted in
February 2007, were on their second deployments.

The name of the civilian contractor who was killed still hasn't been
announced. Secretary of State John Kerry described him Saturday as a Defense
Department civilian, but it was unclear Wednesday whether the person had
worked for the Pentagon or the State Department.

Read more here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/10/v-fullstory/3336036/witness-anne-smedi
nghoff-other.html#storylink=cpy