“… even our children will pay for this. Now they have done it and taken their revenge.” RESIDENTS of an Afghan village near where an American soldier is alleged to have killed 16 civilians are convinced that the slayings were in retaliation for a roadside bomb attack on US forces in the same area a few days earlier. In accounts to The Associated Press and to Afghan government officials, the residents allege that US troops lined up men from the village of Mokhoyan against a wall after the bombing on either March 7 or 8, and told them they would pay a price for the attack. The lawyer for Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, who is accused in the March 11 killings of the 16 civilians, has said that his client was upset because a buddy had lost a leg in an explosion on March 9. It’s unclear if the bombing cited by lawyer John Henry Browne was the same as the one described by the villagers that prompted the alleged threats. After a meeting at a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Mr Browne said Sgt Bales told him a roadside bomb blew off the leg of one of his friends two days before the shootings occurred.