US expresses regret, says Pak post was not in records

The Pakistani forces killed were apparently inside the border post or possibly in bunkers near it, perhaps intermingled with the insurgents who had retreated back across the border into Pakistan after firing on the allied troops on the Afghan side, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry’s results had not yet been officially released.

Pakistani officials say they had provided NATO and the United States with the grid coordinates for all 997 of its border checkpoints. The Americans say they did not have the information for the one struck on June 10.

No blame was assigned by the monthlong inquiry by American, Afghan and Pakistani officials.

The episode initially drew an angry protest from Pakistan’s government and underscored the faulty communication and coordination between allied forces increasingly subject to cross-border attacks by the Taliban and other militants.

It also revealed the deepening frustrations between Pakistan and the United States in what officials on both sides concede is an often dysfunctional and disjointed effort to combat a rising militancy, which uses havens in Pakistan to carry out attacks in neighboring Afghanistan with growing frequency. The attacks have prompted senior NATO and American military officials to press the new Pakistani government for more aggressive action. “This whole incident is just a poster child for the challenges that the US and Pakistan face,” said Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former South Asia specialist for the State Department.

The US, for instance, expressed regret over the Pakistani deaths but concluded that the strikes had hit their targets, and that they were justified to defend the small team of American-led soldiers.