Australian troops killed 39 unarmed prisoners and civilians in Afghanistan, according to the findings of a long-awaited report that was released by the country's military chief Angus Campbell.

“Today YourADF is rightly held to account for allegations of grave misconduct by some members of our Special Forces community during operations in Afghanistan. I encourage everyone to read the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force’s Afghanistan Inquiry report,” Campell tweeted Thursday, urging everyone to read the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force’s Afghanistan Inquiry report.

According to the report, there is credible information of 23 incidents in which one or more non-combatants or persons hors-de-combat were unlawfully killed by or at the direction of members of the Special Operations Task Group in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would be the war crime of murder, and a further two incidents in which a non-combatant or person horsde-combat was mistreated in circumstances which, if so accepted, would be the war crime of cruel treatment.

Some of these incidents involved a single victim, and some multiple victims, the report said.

The report revealed that these incidents involved a total of 39 individuals killed, and a further two cruelly treated; and a total of 25 current or former Australian Defense Force personnel who were perpetrators, either as principals or accessories, some of them on a single occasion and a few on multiple occasions.

“None of these are incidents of disputable decisions made under pressure in the heat of battle. The cases in which it has been found that there is credible information of a war crime are ones in which it was or should have been plain that the person killed was a non-combatant, or hors-decombat,” the report noted.

“While a few of these are cases of Afghan local nationals encountered during an operation who were on no reasonable view participating in hostilities, the vast majority are cases where the persons were killed when hors-de-combat because they had been captured and were persons under control, and as such were protected under international law, breach of which was a crime.”

“The Inquiry also found that there is credible information that some members of the Special Operations Task Group carried ‘throwdowns’ – foreign weapons or equipment, typically though not invariably easily concealable such as pistols, small hand held radios (‘ICOMs’), weapon magazines and grenades – to be placed with the bodies of ‘enemy killed in action’ for the purposes of site exploitation photography, in order to portray that the person killed had been carrying the weapon or other military equipment when engaged and was a legitimate target,” the report added. (ILKHA)