Quote Originally Posted by DarthEnderX View Post

Speaking of which, if she can turn part of her body super hard, why not just do the back of her neck?
Seemed like it was temporary. Diamond skin should also impact on flexibility, something that the female titan seems to use with her cqc. Batman in The Dark Knight requested a suit that allowed him to turn his head at the expense of overall defence.

But not killing all those titans in that situation in no way hinders any of those objectives, and could possibly further them.

I'm with Kraco. It was free attacks on a huge pack of Aberrants, and possibly preventing the female's escape as well. There was no reason NOT to do it.
They weren't really Aberrants. They were normal guys who responded to the female titan's scream. My understanding is that they all respond that way.

And as for the reason not to kill those things, they said before that the key to fighting titans is to NOT fight them. The soldiers were bait, just like in the mission where they tried attracting all the titans to the corner of the wall so Eren could move the boulder - they don't want unnecessary casualties. Killing titans, as far as they knew, didn't help their cause, but increases the chance of people dying while doing so.

Keeping the titans at the edge of the forest enhanced their visibility of the titans while leaving no trees for them to use for offence. If they wanted to kill them they would have had to bring them into the forest some more. Reducing visibility meant a higher possibility for a titan to have walked past them undetected, sabotaging the plan.