U.S. shoots, kills 4 Afghan troops
‘Misunderstanding’ blamed for incident outside U.S. Embassy
MSNBC NEWS SERVICES
msnbc.com
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 21 — U.S. troops guarding the American Embassy in Kabul on Wednesday shot and killed four Afghan soldiers who they mistook for assailants, Afghan officials said.
A SPOKESMAN for the embassy declined comment on the incident, which could prove an embarrassment for the United States, the main backer of the fragile government of President Hamid Karzai.
The shootout erupted as the Afghan forces were unloading weapons from a truck across from the embassy, said Kabul Police Chief Basir Salangi.
Afghan police said one U.S. soldier may have been wounded when one of the injured Afghan soldiers fired back in self-defense.
“There was no firing from the Afghan side, except for one of the wounded soldiers who fired back after the Americans fired at him,” Police Gen. Abdul Rauf told Reuters.
“Four Afghan have been killed, four others have been wounded and possibly one American,” Rauf said.
Salangi said the soldiers were delivering the weapons to an intelligence agency barracks across from the embassy.
“It was a misunderstanding between the American guards at the U.S. Embassy and our soldiers who were unloading weapons,” he told The Associated Press.
“They wanted to unload the weapons to store them inside the brigade, which belongs to the intelligence service,” he said.
‘THEY PANICKED’
An Afghan intelligence soldier told Reuters: “The U.S. soldiers thought the Afghan soldiers were aiming guns at them. ... They panicked and opened fire.”
Maj. Sarah Wood, a British spokeswoman for the international peacekeepers patrolling the capital, said the shooting was being investigated.
“ISAF knows of an exchange of fire outside the U.S. embassy,” Wood said.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a U.S. special forces soldier was wounded Tuesday when a device exploded in the Gardez area in the southeast of the country.
The U.S. military is leading a multinational force pursuing remnants of the former Taliban regime, which was ousted in late 2001, and the allied al-Qaida network blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that year. |
