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Tensions rise as US troops shoot dead Pakistani soldiers

Pakistan has protested to Washington over the killing of two of its troops by US forces along the border with Afghanistan and said it would raise the attack yesterday with Afghan and US military officials.

The incident would be discussed at a meeting of a commission of Pakistani, Afghan and US officials formed to discuss the porous, ill-defined border and the hunt for fugitive extremists in the area, a military spokesman said.

"Whatever happens at the border comes up for discussion," Pakistan's Major General Shaukat Sultan told reporters.

Two Pakistani soldiers were killed and one was injured on Monday when US military planes, called in by ground troops patrolling the border in southeastern Afghanistan's Paktika province, opened fire on what were believed to be attackers fleeing towards the border.

The US military said its ground troops had been fired on during their patrol and the assailants fled towards Pakistan.

A spokesman for the US military's Central Command said it was unclear whether the Pakistanis were killed in the air attack or in exchanges of fire on the ground between US forces and the fleeing assailants.

"We don't know if it was the result of the close air support or if it was in a firefight between the bad guys that were originally identified and the coalition forces," said Commander Dan Gage.

Pakistan's military said US forces had "mistakenly" fired on the Pakistani patrol near Imal Khel post in North Waziristan tribal district.

"The Pakistani and US troops were on their respective sides," Sultan said.

"A strong protest has been lodged with the US authorities about the incident," he announced late on Monday.

The deaths were the first of Pakistani soldiers under US fire in the 20-month-old "war on terror."

The remote, deeply conservative North Waziristan region was a popular escape route for al-Qaeda fighters fleeing the US-led military assault in Afghanistan that followed the attacks and ousted the hardline Taliban regime, allies of al-Qaeda.

Pakistani human-rights officials have said hundreds of al-Qaeda fugitives took refuge in North Waziristan and South Waziristan in late 2001 and last year.

Eleven Pakistani troops hunting the extremists were killed by a band of al-Qaeda suspects in South Waziristan in June last year.

Military officials believe rebels loyal to the ousted Taliban militia, al-Qaeda and renegade Islamist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are operating a guerrilla insurgency against Western and Afghan targets out of the rugged Pakistani-Afghan borderlands.
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