Xbox user accidentally destroys all of the Middle East

Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and all of the Middle East have been reduced to a single charred, radioactive and smoking desert devoid of life this weekend, after an Xbox Live user accidentally logged into the United States Military Defence Network server and went onto inflict what he is calling “the greatest high score of all time” against the group of Arab countries.

According to a Commission headed by the Supreme Court and the Senate, 14-year-old Jake Ericson accidentally logged onto the Pentagon’s wireless servers at about 3:14pm yesterday afternoon after he put new hit First Person Shooter game Call of Duty: Ghosts into his console’s disc tray. Ericson then proceeded to load what he thought was a special downloadable Drone Strike mission, which resulted in the deaths of some 42 million people.

“Usually in these games, if you kill a friendly soldier or a civilian – except in that No Russian airport mission controversy, of course – you die,” said the Commission in its final report. “But outside of the game, there was no such limitation placed on Ericson. His pursuit of topping the leaderboard was unhindered.”

Ericson, who has mastered this game over many years and versions of Call of Duty, was reportedly unstoppable.

“When we saw one of our drones go rogue and start this senseless and horrifying slaughter, we tried to shoot it down with counterdrones, missiles, and countermeasures,” said Military spokesman Hope Infyre, “but he just pressed the Right Trigger button to deploy flares and barrel roll.”

In spite of the controversy, however, Infyre said that they had to look at the “silver lining in all of this”.

“This just shows us how warfare is evolving,” he said. “We shouldn’t punish him, but instead learn from him. If we could boil down war to just one drone, think how much that could save us in yearly budget allocations on Defence.”

The Department of Defence has since considered offering Ericson and other COD fans full-time positions training a future generation of warriors, but they say there are still some legal considerations to be ironed out.

“First of all, we’ll need to amend or even possibly rewrite the Geneva Convention and its laws on the rules of engagement,” said the DOD in a statement, “because right now it doesn’t say anything about the ethics, morals or legality of calling everyone around you a bunch of noob faggots and then teabagging their dead corpses after you shoot them in the back.”