NATO Soldiers Kill Afghans at Checkpoint
'Pakistan Times' Monitoring Desk

KABUL (Afghanistan): NATO soldiers in Afghanistan opened fire on a vehicle that failed to stop at a traffic control point on Monday, leaving three Afghans dead and wounding two others, an official statement said.

Soldiers from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had directed the vehicle to halt using hand gestures, flashing lights and by firing warning shots into the ground, ISAF said in a statement.

"When the vehicle still failed to stop and continued toward the ISAF personnel, the soldiers engaged it with fire," the statement said of the incident at a checkpoint in the eastern province of Kunar.

"After receiving fire, the vehicle injured a 10-year-old boy," it added. Residents in the area said separately that the casualties were school students aged 14 to 16 traveling in a passenger car.

The incident was being investigated with Afghan police and local leaders, ISAF said.

Foreign troops are in Afghanistan to hunt down Taliban and other militants, but in several incidents this year they have killed civilians in vehicles that failed to slow down at checkpoints.

The rising number of civilian casualties from the military effort to defeat the Taliban has raised alarm, although the insurgents, who favour suicide and roadside bombings, have killed more civilians in their attacks.

The United Nations said last month that up to 380 Afghan civilians were killed in fighting between Taliban insurgents and Afghan and international forces in the first four months of 2007.

The figures included those killed by international troops and by Taliban attacks, including suicide bombings, said Richard Bennett, the human rights chief at the UN mission in Afghanistan.

Suicide Attack

Another report says that a suicide attacker detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at a police check post in Afghanistan's southeastern city of Khost Monday, wounding at least five people, officials said.

The attacker drove a car into the police post about three kilometers (two miles) south of Khost, provincial criminal police chief Mohammad Ayob said. "It was a suicide attack," Ayob said.

He was not immediately able to say what casualties were caused.

The provincial health director, Gul Mohammadin Mohammadi, said five people were brought to hospital with injuries. "Three of them are police and two others are civilians," he told foreign news agency.

Police who barred reporters from the scene cordoned off the blast site.●