Afghan residents and family members of the victims gather next to a damaged vehicle inside a house, day after a US drone airstrike in Kabul on August 30, 2021. (Via AFP)

Kabul, September 1 (RHC)-- Sunday’s drone strike in Kabul, which Washington claims targeted a potential Daesh operative preparing a bomb attack, in fact turned out to be a horrifying military blunder that took the lives of 10 members of an Afghan family, seven of them children, according to survivors and witnesses of the nightmarish strike.

The family's car came under the deadly attack as they were about to leave their home for the airport.   The United States said Sunday it had destroyed an explosives-laden vehicle in an airstrike, thwarting a bid by Daesh to detonate a car bomb at Kabul airport.

The U.S. missile, however, obliterated the lives of 10 Afghan civilians in an instant as it struck the family's car with a ferocious force.   "The rocket came and hit the car full of kids inside our house," said a relative.

Aimal Ahmadi said 10 members of the family died in the airstrike -- including his own daughter and five other children.   Neighbors said the house, where little boys and girls had been playing a few minutes prior, turned into a “horror scene.”  They described human flesh stuck to the walls, bones fallen into the bushes and walls stained red with blood.

Talking about one of the younger boys, Farzad, a neighbor said: “We only found his legs.”

The family had been about to go to the Kabul airport and and eventually move to the United States.  The father's brother, Romal, who was also away at the time of the attack, had worked as a driver at the Afghan Ministry of Water and Energy.  The men’s time with the government and affiliation with US-led foreign forces had earned the family a Special Immigrant Visa offered by the U.S..

The United States has not yet taken responsibility for the Afghan civilian deaths, with Pentagon press secretary John Kirby saying at a briefing on Monday: "We are not in a position to dispute it right now."