Afghan govt offers 2009 AFP photo as ‘evidence’ of 2014 air strike

KABUL: (MEP) – A photograph the Afghan government distributed to back up its claims about civilian casualties in a United States airstrike 10 days ago was actually a 2009 Agence France-Presse photograph of a different funeral, a media investigation revealed Sunday.

The presidential palace gave journalists a dossier compiled by a fact-finding team sent by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to Parwan province to gather evidence on the airstrike on Jan 15.

Among the 14 photographs in the dossier is an AFP image taken on Sept 4, 2009 of a funeral in Kunduz province after a US airstrike that destroyed two fuel tankers, killing at least 70 civilians.

“We are taking this issue very seriously to find out who put this photograph in the dossier, which was made by several government departments,” Mr. Aimal Faizi, spokesman for President Karzai, told AFP.