Afhan soldiers killed in US error

US troops shot dead four Afghan soldiers and wounded four others outside the US Embassy in Kabul yesterday when they mistakenly thought they were about to come under attack, Afghan officials said.

The incident came just after Washington raised its terror alert status to high after recent bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco.

It could prove a major embarrassment for the main backer of the fragile government of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.

The US Embassy said it regretted the incident.

Amrullah Salihi, a senior Afghan intelligence official, said US Marines guarding the embassy opened fire when they spotted the Afghans moving weapons at a military compound opposite.

“It was a misunderstanding,” Salihi said.

Another intelligence official added: “The US soldiers thought the Afghan soldiers were aiming guns at them. They panicked and opened fire.”

There were no US casualties, said Alberto Fernandez, a spokesman for the US embassy.

Police earlier said one American might have been wounded when one of the wounded Afghans returned fire in self-defence. “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 General Abdul Rauf said.

“Four Afghans have been killed, four others have been wounded.”

Fernandez gave no details of the incident, but blamed “heightened tension”.

“The US Embassy regrets the loss of life,” he said.

The fortress-like embassy in central Kabul is guarded by heavily armed Marines positioned in sandbagged watchtowers.

US soldiers blocked off the road in front of the embassy immediately after the mid-morning incident and Zalmay Khalilzad, US President George W Bush’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Iraq, cancelled a news conference that had been scheduled for later in the day.

No reason was given for the cancellation.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a US Special Forces soldier was wounded when a device exploded in the Gardez area in the southeast of the country on Tuesday.

The US military is leading a multinational force pursuing remnants of the former Taliban regime ousted in late 2001 and the al-Qaida network blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States that year.