DW-World.de | Deutsche Welle | 26 November 2009

Germany’s army chief of staff resigns over NATO airstrike in Kunduz

Schneiderhan is the latest casualty of the airstrike

The head of Germany’s armed forces has tendered his resignation. The move comes after media reported that the government may have withheld information about a deadly attack that killed numerous civilians in Afghanistan.

Germany’s military chief of staff, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, has stepped down in the wake of revelations about his handling of a deadly bombing raid in Afghanistan.

Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg announced the resignation in parliament on Thursday as a debate began on Germany’s military deployment in Afghanistan.

Guttenberg said that Schneiderhan had failed to provide proper information about the incident.

The attack on September 4 against two tanker trucks was called by a German colonel who feared the vehicles could be used in an attack on troops. NATO says that up to 142 people, including civilians, died in the attack.

Schneiderhan had “released himself from his duties at his own request,” said Guttenberg, adding that Deputy Defense Minister Peter Wichert was also resigning.

Errors in procedure

A NATO report has concluded that there were “procedural errors,” said Guttenberg, but the decision to request the airstrike had been “appropriate in military terms.”

Schneiderhan’s resignation follows a report in Thursday’s edition of German daily Bild, alleging that former Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung failed to pass on information from a military report and kept secret a video taken in one of the planes involved in the attack.

The newspaper report says that shortly after the attack, Jung was informed that children had been injured. Jung, who now serves as labor minister, contended that only insurgents had been killed in the days following the strike.

Jung has denied the allegations and said that he had not ruled out the possibility of civilian victims. However, he said, initial reports from investigations on the scene showed that only the Taliban and their allies had been hit. 

The German Defense Ministry is investigating the allegations.

rc/AP/Reuters/dpa/AFP
Editor: Nancy Isenson