Shots near Afghan minister not murder bid -ministry
Posted on: Sunday, 11 September 2005, 05:53 CDT
KABUL (Reuters) - Shots fired near the Afghan defense minister were not an assassination attempt as originally thought but the result of a dispute among soldiers, a ministry spokesman said on Sunday.
Shots were fired toward minister Abdul Rahim Wardak's vehicle on Saturday shortly after he had got out at Kabul airport to catch a helicopter flight.
The incident came just over a week before parliamentary elections, the next big step in Afghanistan's difficult path to stability. Wardak is not running.
The Defense Ministry initially said the shooting by men in uniform was a bungled assassination attempt, but spokesman Zahir Azimi said an investigation had determined the firing was the result of an arguement.
"Soldiers and officers were involved in a clash among themselves when the defense minister's car was by accident passing," Azimi told a briefing.
Hours after the shooting, a helicopter carrying army chief General Bismillah Khan, two cabinet ministers and other government officials crash-landed north of Kabul.
No one was seriously hurt and Azimi said the crash was an accident.
Security is tight in the run-up to the parliamentary and provincial elections, which have been denounced by Taliban insurgents.
Azimi said 27 insurgents had been killed in an operation by Afghan government troops and U.S. forces in Helmand province in the south launched on Friday.
Forty-five suspected militants had been detained, he said.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. military, which has about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, confirmed a joint Afghan-U.S. operation was under way in the area but she declined to give details.
A Taliban spokesman confirmed the fighting but said only three Taliban had been killed. The spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, said eight Americans had been killed and 48 villagers captured.
U.S. and Afghan government troops have been mounting a series of sweeps to root out pockets of militants and try to ensure a peaceful vote.
Azimi said 27 other insurgents had been killed in various clashes in the south and east over the past week.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in violence this year, most of them militants but including 49 U.S. troops.
Source: REUTERS
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