A US drone attack on a Kabul neighbor in the wake of 13 American soldiers being killed by a suicide bomber killed ten civilians, including women and seven children according to the Pentagon, the Associated Press reports.

Saying “the strike was a tragic mistake,” Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, acknowledged what multiple news outlets had been reporting:  that the August 29th attack killed an aid worker and neighbors who were trying to flee Kabul, not a high-level ISIS operative responsible for planning the group’s operations.

“I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, were tragically killed in that strike,” McKenzie said. “Moreover, we now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K, or a direct threat to U.S. forces.”

In the days after the August drone strike, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley called the attack “righteous” retaliation for a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 American military members and more than 160 Afghans seeking to flee the country which had just fallen into Taliban control.

Milley offered an apology after McKenzie’s statement.  “In a dynamic high-threat environment, the commanders on the ground had appropriate authority and had reasonable certainty that the target was valid, but after deeper post-strike analysis our conclusion is that innocent civilians were killed,” Milley said.

The US had stated that the Hellfire missile strike on 37-year-old Zemerai Ahmadi’s car took out an ISIS leader, but in actuality, it struck a residential neighborhood where people were gathering to prepare for a journey to the airport.  Zemerai and others killed were not affiliated with ISIS and had, in fact, helped the US military during their occupation of Afghanistan.