A BBC headline reads "Ten Taleban fighters 'killed'" and I read 'so they say.' What else could the scare quotes mean? Supposedly? In a manner of speaking?

Is this meant as a direct quote? It's possible that coalition forces used precisely the word 'killed,' but there's no reason to quote the word unless you want to distance yourself from it.

And why might someone want to do that? Scare quotes as a rhetorical device are a natural extension of direct quotation as a means of dissociating oneself from a statement. In that regard, they're essentially the same thing. So why would someone, whether consciously or not, dissociate himself from a word like kill?

Could it be that 'to kill' is neutral? One kills a bug as easily as a proposal. One kills in self-defense. It says nothing about means, manner, or morality. People are killed by accident, killed justly, killed in their sleep.

The only reason I can come up with is that the term is too neutral. To say that coalition forces have killed members of the Taleban seems to some an understatement. Perhaps they see it as 'murder.'

Here's the lead*:

US-led forces in Afghanistan say they have killed 10 suspected Taleban militants in the south of the country.

Well, that's what they say.

For his part, the journalist spends the majority of the article listing coalition deaths and injuries with no real elaboration on the headline.

The final tally from this confused and repetitive article: