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US `mistakenly' open fire after Afghan bomb attack

US soldiers at the scene of a suicide attack in the Afghan capital of Kabul yesterday "mistakenly" opened fire, killing one person and wounding another, a city police chief said.

"US forces mistakenly fired on people. One was killed, one wounded and there is a demonstration," Kabul police official Alishah Paktiawal said. "People are coming from every direction."

The Afghan interior ministry offered the same account of events.

"US forces opened fire on people, killed one and injuring another one," ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.

"There is now a demonstration protesting the firing," he said.

The US-led coalition and the separate NATO-led force could not immediately confirm the deadly shooting.

Earlier, the suicide car bomb exploded near a convoy of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in a busy residential area on the west side of the city.

The attack in western Kabul also wounded four civilians and a foreigner, General Ali Shah Paktiawal said.

He said a NATO vehicle and seven civilian vehicles were damaged in the attack.

The bomber also died, he said.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, claimed the group's responsibility for the blast.

The NATO assistance force said it was looking into the report of the attack, but had no further information.

Witnesses gave a higher casualty count than police, saying seven or eight people died.

The blast came amid a wave of violence lashing Afghanistan, particularly the volatile south, including a suicide blast on Friday that targeted a NATO convoy at Tirin Kot in Uruzgan Province, killing 10 people including five children and a Dutch soldier.

Kabul has been spared the worst of this year's bloodshed, which has claimed 2,300 lives so far, mostly insurgents, according to a count based on figures from officials from the US, NATO, the UN and Afghanistan.

Yesterday's blast destroyed the suicide attacker's car, wrecked other civilian vehicles in the area including a taxi and shattered windows of homes and shops at the roadside.
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