Weapons store death blast 'was accident'

The US military was today investigating an explosion at a weapons cache in Afghanistan that killed seven American soldiers and wounded three in what Afghan officials said was an accident.

Another American soldier was missing after the blast, which caused one of the deadliest days for US forces since they deployed there two years ago. An Afghan interpreter was also wounded.

The explosion, on Thursday afternoon, happened as the soldiers worked around the cache in the village of Dehe Hendu, about 90 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul.

Lt Col Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman at US military headquarters in Kabul, said there were no indications of “active enemy activity” at the site.

But Hilferty added: “We are investigating.”

Hilferty said it was unclear whether the soldiers were handling the weapons, which he said included rifle ammunition and mortar rounds. He gave no details of where the weapons were concealed.

But Ghazni province Governor Haji Asadullah Khan said the blast was set off by mistake as the US soldiers were trying to defuse arms at an old weapons depot found in an open area.

“I’m sure it wasn’t a plot by the Taliban,” Khan said. “We know the area and the people are good.”

Coalition soldiers regularly uncover and destroy caches of weapons, much of it dating back to the US-backed Mujahedeen resistance against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

Residents often lead military units to the caches – a sign, the military says, that it is winning the confidence of Afghans tired after almost a quarter-century of strife.

The deaths come at the end of a bloody month that has underlined the danger and instability still plaguing Afghanistan two years after a US-led invasion ousted the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime for harbouring Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida network.