Um, they fired on a van despite realizing that it had come to pick up the wounded. Geneva Conventions clearly state that hospitals, both fixed and mobile, ambulances, hospital ships, medical aircraft, and medical personnel are not to be fired upon.
https://youtu.be/5rXPrfnU3G0?t=9m10s
(You'll also note the trigger-happy attitude of the gunner. He kept begging for permission to engage, and at one point got pretty frustrated that he was having to wait. Like the OP said: chilling.)
This van didn't have any markings to indicate that it was a dedicated medical unit. What about enemy combatants that are performing medical tasks at the moment? As far as I understand, they're fair game.
> (You'll also note the trigger-happy attitude of the gunner. He kept begging for permission to engage, and at one point got pretty frustrated that he was having to wait. Like the OP said: chilling.)
He was looking at people, that (in his view, conceived by a completely honest mistake) were there to kill his comrades in arms. His attitude, being eager to kill them, is completely reasonable — war is a constant kill or be killed situation, and allowing your enemy to evacuate the wounded combatants mean that they will later come back and kill you or your comrades in arms.
Once again, your reaction confirms my main point: the general public doesn't bother to think the situation through and judges actions made in war without the necessary context. Which just confirms that this kind of transparency is just as good as determining whether or not climate change is real (or if vaccination is harmful) through general election without any minimal education requirements.
This is war. The video clearly shows that soldiers made a decision made on an honest, although tragic, mistake. They have to make this kind of decisions all the time - and I fail to see how anyone can say, from information that was available to them, that the decision was in any way wrong.
The fact that this story had to be covered up says more about idiocy of public and the media that would've (and did) make a baseless witchhunt. I finally 'got it' after watching "Eye in the sky" (spoilers!): if hollywood screenwriters and moviegoers really think that killing one innocent girl to prevent two suicide bombings is some kind of a complicated moral dilemma that's worth more than three seconds of deliberating, then may be this kind of public really shouldn't be trusted with classified information.