WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has apologised to the media for the military's refusal to allow coverage in Afghanistan of troops killed and injured by an errant U.S. bomb and has promised to ease restrictions on reporters.
"We fully believe that you should be allowed to cover the bad things as well as the good things," Defence Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told reporters.
"We take it very, very seriously. We are looking into actual constructive steps we can take to improve the situation going forward," she added. "So our apologies for the screw-ups."
Clarke spoke a day after media complaints over refusal by officials at a U.S. Marine base south of Kandahar to allow coverage by reporters of American and Afghan opposition troops killed and injured by an errant 2,000-pound (907 kg) U.S. bomb.
Officials at the base refused to allow a small pool of reporters and photographers to get close to casualties arriving by helicopter from the scene of the "friendly fire" accident.
Three U.S. special operations troops and six Afghan soldiers died in the incident and several dozen were injured.
Clarke said those at the base had been too zealous in protecting the privacy of the dead and injured and their families.
'BAD DECISIONS' MADE
"I think people on the ground were operating with the best of intent. Some bad decisions were made. It was not handled the way it should have been handled," she said.
"We absolutely believe that, with all the appropriate considerations given to the sensitivities of the families of the injured and the killed, we still should facilitate coverage of the fact that these things happen."
The spokeswoman said that reporting rules set up between the Defence Department and media organisations for allowing reporters to stay and work at the base while protecting military operational security had been followed by journalists.
"We have every indication that everyone operating in the pool is doing everything they ought to be doing and we want to live up to our end of the bargain," said Clarke, who added that she had discussed the matter with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and officials of the U.S. military's Central Command.
CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters from a desert airstrip set up by Marines south of Kandahar recovered the injured American troops and Afghan anti-Taliban fighters hit by the bomb north of Kandahar.
New York Times reporter Steven Lee Myers, also a member of the media pool, wrote: "Journalists and photographers accompanying the Marines here were confined in a warehouse after the Americans and Afghans began arriving ... and while they were being treated."