U.S. drone strike in Kabul mistakenly killed civilians, not terrorists, Pentagon says

[Kenneth Almquist]

12. The intelligence was very thin

According to the New York Times, the military took an interest in the vehicle because it was spotted leaving an alleged ISIS safe house. The ISIS safe house may have been classified as such back when we still had people on the ground in Afghanistan. The military tracked the vehicle for the next eight hours. Military sources claim that they saw heavy packages being loaded into the vehicle at one point that they suspected were explosives. The Times couldn't find any evidence to support this claim, although they were told that containers of water were loaded into the vehicle later in the day. Near the end of the day, the vehicle drove in the direction of the Kabul Airport, but before reaching the airport it turned into Amadi's residence. That's were the attack took place, presumably on the assumption that this was a temporary stop and that the vehicle would shortly continue on to the airport where the presumed explosives would be detonated.

The only source of intelligence mentioned by the Times, other than whatever intelligence was used to identify the ISIS safe house, was drone imagery. It appears that the military did not check tax records to determine who owned the buildings where the vehicle stopped, much less use reverse address lookup to determine who resided at those locations.

I think that there was sufficient evidence for the military to be justifiably concerned that the vehicle they were tracking might be a car bomb headed for the Kabul Airport, but not enough for the military to make a definite call either way.