NATO
soldiers opened fire after a car with brake failure sped toward a checkpoint
set up by foreign and Afghan troops, who thought the vehicle was part of a
suicide attack, said Fazel Ahmad Sherzad, a senior detective in Kandahar city.
Two
civilians were killed and four wounded by bullets that hit more than one car,
he said, adding that the dead were both adolescent boys. Dawood Farhad, a
doctor at Kandahar provincial hospital, said two bodies were brought in with
gunshot wounds.
NATO-led
forces said they had opened fire in self-defense after a civilian car veered
across a ditch and struck at least three members of a foot patrol.
After the
troops opened fire, the car went into the ditch and flipped over, killing the
passenger and a nearby pedestrian and wounding two other civilians, the
NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.
Civilian
casualties caused by foreign troops have long been a source of tension between
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Western allies. They also anger Afghans,
complicating efforts to win their support for a war that has brought only
misery for most ordinary people.
The
incident is still being assessed, the statement added, but it comes in a
sensitive area — the US has poured troops into Kandahar to try to win back
control of the Taleban stronghold and there has been bitter fighting in
districts around the city — and at a sensitive time.
The
deaths come just days after the first of five US soldiers charged with killing
unarmed Afghan civilians was sentenced to 24 years in prison after pleading
guilty to three counts of premeditated murder.
That case
represents the most serious prosecution of alleged US military atrocities
during 10 years of war in Afghanistan.
Rolling
Stone and German magazine Der Spiegel recently published photos of two of the
soldiers posing separately with the bloodied corpse of their young Afghan
victim, whose head they were holding up by the hair.
