The American government on Saturday paid a compensation of $50,000 each to the families of victims who were killed in an alleged massacre carried out by a US soldier in Afghanistan two weeks ago.
According to reports, payments were made from the US military in a meeting between the American officials and relatives of the victims of the alleged killings at the office of the governor of Kandahar Province.
The US government has also given $11,000 for each person wounded.
Stating that any eventual payments would be out of compassion for the victims, American officials said that Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the soldier accused of killing the villagers, would still face trial.
The incident happened after Bales, 38, left his small base in Panjwayi district of Kandahar in the early hours of March 11.
Bales, who was flown out of Afghanistan soon after the killings, was formally charged on Friday with 17 counts of murder and 6 counts of assault, reports The New York Times.
American military officials in Afghanistan said Bales, who was serving his fourth combat tour overseas, would have been issued a 9-millimeter pistol and an M-4 rifle with a grenade-launcher attachment, though they could not confirm that he was carrying those weapons at the time of the killings, added the report.
Four of the dead were women and nine were children and eleven of them came from one family.
Meanwhile, John Henry Browne, the lawyer for Bales, said his client remembers little of the night of the killings.
