The Wedding Crashers

On July 6th Lal Zareen woke up a happy man. This was the day his daughter and son were staging a double wedding. People came from miles around to join the revelry. There was laughter and merriment aplenty as the happy group wound their way towards the ceremony when some unexpected guests arrived.

A young American pilot in a war plane swooped low over the wedding party and dropped a bomb on them. This blew up a considerable number of the guests although some escaped the first blast and so the pilot returned to drop another bomb on the survivors. This killed off most of the women and children, but with admirable attention to detail, he then came back for thirds to be absolutely sure.

Although this is one wedding party that went with a bang, its seems safe to assume that for Lal Zareen and his guests, it was not a success.

Alastair Leithead, visiting the site as a BBC correspondent, says around 53 people died. Most of them women and children.

For two days after the attack the US military denied being wedding crashers, saying they had bombed insurgents. However, now Lt Nathan Perry says 'I assure you we do not target civilians and that our forces go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties."

My thoughts go out to the pilot who now has to live with his contribution to raising the human condition. Around fifty women and children blown to smithereens by your hand is a lot of conscience to take to sleep with you every night.