Afghanistan, Afghan Civilian Shooting | featured news

Karilyn Bales tells Matt Lauer in an interview on NBC's "Today" show the charges that her husband killed 17 Afghan villagers are "unbelievable."

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged with 17 counts of murder and six counts of assault and attempted murder in connection with the massacre, a senior U.S. defense official tells NBC News.

He is accused of the kind of crime that makes people shiver, the killing of families in their own homes under cover of night, the butchery of defenseless children. Under normal circumstances, Americans would dismiss such an act as worthy of only one response: swift and merciless punishment.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday accused the United States of failing to fully cooperate with an investigation into the massacre of 16 Afghan villagers by a U.S. staff sergeant and questioned whether only one soldier could have been involved.

The call would soon become agonizingly familiar: A 28-year-old Army specialist from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, recently home from Afghanistan, had walked into a parking garage in Salt Lake City with a full set of body armor, ammunition clips and his AR-15 rifle.