Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the US soldier who killed 16 civilians including women and children in Afghanistan in March 2012, faced several survivors and relatives of the dead

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the US soldier who killed 16 civilians including women and children in Afghanistan in March 2012, faced several survivors and relatives of the dead.

Bales pleaded guilty in June to avoid capital punishment for killing the Afghan villagers. His sentencing hearing began late Tuesday at a US military base in Washington state, with six jurors who must decide whether he is sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole or without it.

At the start of the trial, an Afghan teenager who survived the rampage testified about the pain of losing his grandmother.

The teenager, whose name was given as Rafiulla, was shot in the legs, and his sister was also seriously wounded and now suffers nightmares, Reuters reported.

“She loved me extra and every time I think of her I cry,” the 15-year-old said through an interpreter about his grandmother.

Bales has admitted to gunning down the unarmed villagers in nighttime attacks on their family compounds in Kandahar province.

An Afghan farmer, who was shot in the cheek and neck during the massacre, took the witness stand too. Haji Mohammad Naim appeared in the courtroom testifying in his native Pashto through an interpreter.

“This bastard stood right in front of me!” the Associated Press quoted him as saying. “I wanted to ask him, ‘What did I do? What have I done to you?’… And he shot me!”

Naim’s two teenage sons, Sadiquallah and Faizullah, also testified. Sadiquallah was shot during the attack but Faizullah was not at home at the time, according to AP.

During the hearing, seven Afghans testified, including four who were injured in the attacks and three who were relatives of the dead or wounded.

The massacre prompted angry protests in Afghanistan last year so that the US temporarily halted combat operations there.

Bales had earlier expressed a desire for revenge after a fellow soldier had been wounded in a roadside bomb blast in the Asian country and lost his leg.

During his plea hearing in June, the US soldier said, “There’s not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things I did,” but he did not say he was sorry, AP said.