Obama seeks to calm Afghan massacre fallout

‘We’re heartbroken over the loss of innocent lives’:

US: President Barack Obama Tuesday sought to calm outrage over a shooting massacre by a US soldier in Afghanistan, saying he took the tragedy as seriously as if Americans had been slaughtered.

Obama promised that the culprit who killed 16 civilians, mostly women and children in a methodical house-to-house killing spree, would face the “full force” of US law -- wherever the investigation led.

The somber US commander-in-chief said he had assured Afghan President Hamid Karzai that “the United States takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered.” “We're heartbroken over the loss of innocent life,” Obama said. “The killing of innocent civilians is outrageous and it's unacceptable. It's not who we are as a country, and it does not represent our military.” Obama said he had directed the Pentagon to spare no effort in a full investigation into why a gun-toting US army sergeant and veteran of three tours of Iraq, apparently left his base and mounted a lone orgy of murder. “I can assure the American people and the Afghan people that we will follow the facts wherever they lead us, and we will make sure that anybody who was involved is held fully accountable with the full force of the law,” he said.

His comments, in the incongruent calm of the White House Rose Garden, came hours after Taliban insurgents threatened revenge against “sick-minded American savages... for every single martyr” of the massacre. AFP