Seven killed in Afghanistan fighting

KABUL - Four Afghan army soldiers were killed in a clash with US Special Forces in central Afghanistan, while two US soldiers and one civilian were killed in eastern region, officials said Saturday.

The “friendly fire” incident occurred when the Afghan army troops clashed with US soldiers returning from a nighttime operation in the central province of Wardak early Saturday, a spokesman for the provincial governor said.

“Four Afghan national army soldiers were killed and seven others were wounded,” Shahidullah Shahid said. He did not say if there were casualties among the US forces.

A NATO plane also fired on the Afghan army post, which was recently erected near a highway in Wardak’s Sayed Abad district, he said.

“The deputy provincial governor is leading an investigation in the area right right now, but what I can say at the moment is that maybe there was some misunderstanding between the two sides because the army post was very new in the area,” the spokesman said.

A NATO military spokesman in Kabul said that they were looking into the incident.

Elsewhere, two US soldiers and one civilian were killed in eastern Afghanistan Saturday in an incident still under investigation.

“Two US service members and one US employee were killed today in eastern Afghanistan,” NATO said in a statement.

Afghanistan’s eastern region, which shares a long border with neighbouring Pakistan, is the main hub for the Haqqani network, an associate group of Taliban militants.

The latest deaths took to 29 the number of US soldiers killed in Afghanistan in January.