KABUL, 23 August 2004 — US-led soldiers killed three people overnight when they opened fire on a vehicle carrying a six family members which attempted to run a checkpoint in southern Afghanistan, the US-led military yesterday.
“Coalition forces fired on a pick-up truck that attempted to run through a joint Afghan National Army-Coalition checkpoint near Ghazni, killing three and wounding two,” the US-led coalition said in an e-mailed statement. After the incident, which occurred at 9:00 p.m. (1630 GMT) Saturday, soldiers searched the truck but did not find any weapons, the statement said.
US military spokesman Capt. Mike Eckert told AFP by telephone that investigations were still ongoing into whether all the people in the car were civilians.
The dead included one male and two females, the statement said.
Reuters Adds: The United Nations in Kabul yesterday distanced itself from a call to consider withdrawing personnel from Afghanistan following a bomb attack on a voter registration office and a series of attacks on election workers.
A United Nations Staff Union committee in New York urged Secretary-General Kofi Annan late last week to consider suspending operations in the country pending a review of security ahead of a landmark presidential election on Oct. 9, and parliamentary polls six months later. “I saw that report... That did not come from the UN in Afghanistan. It came from...the staff union in New York,” Manoel de Almieda e Silva, the UN spokesman in Kabul, said yesterday.
The union’s call for a rethink came after the bombing on Thursday of a UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body site in Farah, 700 km (440 miles) west of Kabul.
Taleban fighters waging a campaign of violence to disrupt the election claimed responsibility for the attack which involved two bombs detonated with timers set 10 minutes apart.
