Salala Incident

Date: November 26, 2011 • Location: Rome, Italy

In a friendly-fire incident, a skirmish occurred between U.S.-led NATO forces and Pakistani security forces at two military checkposts along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border.

In military terminology, friendly fire or fratricide is an unintentional attack by allied or neutral forces on friendly troops while attempting to attack enemy or hostile targets. Many NATO militaries refer to these incidents as blue on blue. Examples include misidentifying the target as hostile, cross-fire while engaging an enemy, and long-range ranging errors or inaccuracy. Accidental fire not intended to attack enemy or hostile targets, or deliberate firing on one's own troops for disciplinary reasons, is not called friendly fire, and neither is unintentional harm to civilian or neutral targets, which is sometimes referred to as collateral damage. Training accidents and bloodless incidents also do not qualify as friendly fire in terms of casualty reporting.