"We are destroyed": Afghan family mourns the death of 10 of its members, including 7 children

By Chantal Da Silva - NBC News

The Ahmadi family was full of hope as the weekend rolled around: they were having a wedding in a few days and they believed they might be able to get on an evacuation flight from Kabul to the United States.

There was a lot to be optimistic about.

But on Sunday, their hopes turned to despair after 10 family members, including

seven children

, were killed in a US drone attack in Kabul, relatives told NBC News.

"It was 10 civilians," Emal Ahmadi told NBC News in a phone call, indicating that his young daughter, Malika, was among the dead.

"

My daughter ... was 2 years old,

" he said.

A relative throws himself on the coffin of 13-year-old Farzad, who was killed in the US drone strike in Kabul.

Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

On the day of the attack, Ahmadi's cousin, Zemari Ahmadi, 38, had just arrived home from work, with his 13-year-old son, Farzad, the youngest of the three, running to greet him.

(Other reports have said that Farzad was 12 years old, but both Ahmadi and another relative told NBC News that he was 13 years old.)

Farzad, who had just learned to drive, wanted to park his father's car, a wish Zemari indulged as other family members gathered around.

It was at this point that Ahmadi said

an explosion tore apart the vehicle

, killing Zemari, Farzad and eight other family members, as The New York Times and The Washington Post first reported.

Sunday's drone attack was launched after the extremist group Islamic State Khorasan claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing outside Kabul airport last week that killed 13 US servicemen and more than 110 Afghans.

The explosion, which came amid America's chaotic exit from the nearly 20-year conflict in the country, will increase pressure on President Joe Biden as his Administration tries to deal with terrorist threats from outside Afghanistan. through attacks called "above the horizon" (from a distance) and seeks reprisals for the attack last Thursday.

[About thirty California students are still trapped in Afghanistan]

While for Biden the evacuation from Afghanistan was "a success", others call it a "resounding failure"

Sept.

1, 202102: 27

"We just proved that we have that capability in the last week. We attacked ISIS-K from a distance, days after they killed 13 of our service members and dozens of innocent Afghans," Biden said during a speech Tuesday at the White House in which he defended his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

In a briefing on Monday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Washington was "not in a position to rebut" reports that its drone strike on an ISIS-K target caused civilian casualties and that the US was doing research.

Kirby added that the United States takes these reports "very, very seriously."

"Reports of civilian casualties"

Malika and two other young children were the youngest members of the family killed, along with Ahmadi's nephews Arwin, 7, and Benyamin, 6, and Zemari's two other children, Zamir, 20, and Faisal. , 16, said Ahmadi.

Zemari was a technical engineer for Nutrition and Education International, a non-profit organization working to combat malnutrition based in Pasadena, California.

Just a day before her death, she

had been helping prepare and deliver

soy-based

meals

to women and children in Kabul refugee camps, NEI president Steven Kwon said in an email to NBC News.

"We are all very saddened and shocked by his sudden death," Kwon said.

"He was highly respected by his colleagues and compassionate to the poor and needy." 

Ramal Ahmadi is comforted by relatives during a mass funeral in Kabul on Monday. Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Abdul Naser Ahmadi, Zemari's colleague and friend for six years, said he was devastated, describing Ahmadi as "

a good man with good ethics

".

Ahmad Naser, a former Afghan army officer and US military contractor, was also killed in the blast, Ramin Yousuf, a cousin of Zemari and Ahmadi, told NBC News on Tuesday.

Naser was just days away from marrying 21-year-old Samia Ahmadi, Zemari's daughter Yousuf said.

He said the family had planned to have a small wedding this week and that Naser was hoping to get part of the family on an evacuation flight to the United States.

But on Monday, instead of a wedding or a new chapter in the United States, the family held a funeral.

"They were all buried," said Yousuf, 31.

"

We are all destroyed

. The family has disappeared," he said.

These were the human losses left by the war in Afghanistan

Aug. 31, 202102: 54

Captain Bill Urban, a spokesman for the US Central Command, said in a previously released statement that the

United States was "aware of reports of civilian casualties

."

Urban said "subsequent major and powerful explosions occurred as a result of the destruction of the vehicle" in which Zemari and Farzad were located, suggesting that there was a "large amount of explosive material inside that could have caused more casualties." .

Ahmadi says he believes the United States should help his family, especially after losing so much.

"I want the United States to support us," he said in an email.

"They took the lives of my nieces, they martyred them. They must compensate us because

we have lost our family

, we have lost our house and our property," he added.

In a phone interview on Monday, Daniel Balson, Amnesty International USA's director of advocacy for Europe and Central Asia, said he was not surprised by the tragedy experienced by Ahmadi's family.

Civilian casualties in

U.S.

drone

or

drone

strikes, he said, have long been a grim reality of the decades-long war in Afghanistan.

US soldiers prepare to board a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft to depart from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Via REUTERS

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the US government has carried out drone strikes in several countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

During the Barack Obama Administration, the use of targeted drone strikes against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State terror group was dramatically expanded, while new rules were introduced to promote accountability for results and preserve the lives of civilians.

["He told me he was going to return," says the mother of a fallen soldier in Afghanistan]

The Trump Administration saw some of those rules dropped, trying to tear down the bureaucracy that stood in the way of certain attacks.

Balson said that instead of launching drone strikes in Afghanistan, he believes the Biden administration

should have focused

on its evacuation effort.