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US forces kill 14 guards: officials

An Afghan national policeman, whose eye was permanently damaged by an improvised explosive device, smokes a cigarette at an observation post in the hills of the Sabari district of Khost Province along the Afghan-Pakistani border on Saturday. PHOTO: AFP

Fourteen Afghan security guards were killed in a clash with US-led troops, a provincial governor said yesterday, but the military said that they were suspected militants who fired first.

Three destroyed vehicles remaining at the scene after the fighting in the eastern province of Khost late on Sunday were scorched and pocked with bullet holes, a reporter said.

Khost Governor Arsala Jamal said the men were security guards for a road construction company, rejecting suggestions from the US-led coalition that the men were anti-government militants.

“None of them is alive to say how it happened ... But I know they were not Taliban. They were security guards working for US$250 a month,” Jamal said.

Locals said they had seen men in the vehicles raise their arms in a surrender-like gesture before they were fired on.

The US Forces Afghanistan said its troops had stopped three suspicious-looking vehicles, and the occupants had climbed out and opened fire on them.

“There were three vehicles, they got out with weapons and started firing. We returned fire,” Colonel Greg Julian said, adding the men were carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

“The helicopter was an overwatch and when the suspects started firing, we fired back and the helicopter also fired on the vehicles,” he said. “Anybody that is going to fire on the coalition is not necessarily a friend of the Afghan government.”

The clash took place about 12km northeast of the provincial capital, also called Khost, and about 2km from an international military base.

The US military said it was looking into the incident with the Afghan Interior Ministry and had investigators on the scene.

After the troops returned fire, there were explosions in the vehicles, it said in a statement.

“Numerous ammunition belts and small-arms weapons were recovered from the vehicles,” the statement said.

There are tens of thousands of international soldiers in Afghanistan to help the government fight an insurgency led by the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001.

There have been dozens of incidents in which international troops have been accused of killing Afghan security forces or civilians, sometimes by mistake or after false intelligence.

The foreign forces have also said militants deliberately operate among civilians for their own protection.

There was a similar incident late last month in which the US military said it had killed several insurgents in the province of Ghazni but local officials said the men were civilian security guards, 23 of whom were killed.

An investigation into that incident was still under way but the men had opened fire first and were armed with AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, which were not authorized for security guards, Julian said.
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