US soldiers will not face charges over Pakistani deaths

Pakistani soldiers salute the coffins of their comrades who were killed in a NATO strike A second investigation into the incident carried out by the US military determines that no American military personnel should be punished in face of the deadly airstrikes, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing three senior military officials.
The American forces fired in self-defense and any other mistakes had been the result of battlefield confusion, the officials said.
“We found nothing criminally negligent on the part of any individual in our investigations of the incident,” said one senior American military official involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two Pakistani military outposts in northwest Pakistan on November 26, killing 24 Pakistani troops and plunging the already strained US-Pakistan relations further into crisis.
A primary investigation into the incident by Pentagon in December put the blame on both Americans and Pakistani forces, indicating that the Pakistani troops fired first from two border posts that were not on coalition maps.
The findings also suggested that the Pakistani soldiers kept firing even after Americans tried to warn them that they were shooting at allied forces.
Pakistan, however, rejected the result of the probe, pointing the finger of blame at American troops.
This is while a Pakistani parliamentary committee on Tuesday demanded an apology from the United States for the November airstrike, calling the attack a “blatant violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
In response to the airstrike, Pakistan stopped the NATO supply convoys headed for the US-led forces in Afghanistan. Islamabad also called on the US to vacate Shamsi airbase in Balochistan province.