'Family says British troops kill innocent Afghan'

Reuters (UK), 17 February, 2002 10:00 GMT



KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan family say they are taking a pregnant woman to hospital when British paratroopers fired on their car, killing a young man.

British forces said they had come under fire early on Saturday morning at an observation post in the capital Kabul and had returned fire. But the family said the British soldiers targeted the wrong people.

"We took the car to take us to the hospital and suddenly we heard the sound of gunfire. In that moment my brother was killed," said Mohammad Ishaq, whose arm was bandaged.

Ishaq, his neighbour who was driving the car, his mother and his heavily pregnant wife who later gave birth, were all wounded, Ishaq said.

The family said it was unarmed and did not fire on the observation post in western Kabul, but Ishaq said he thought shots may have been fired on the post from another source.

British paratroopers, part of the International Security Assistance Force(ISAF), were unharmed and evacuated the observation post after returning fire.

They later returned to the scene with Afghan police and found the dead man and the four injured in a nearby house, said ISAF spokesman Neil Peckham.

"At the house they found the body of one man, and wounded people -- two men and two women -- as well as a new-born child," Peckham said.

"There was a clear indication that they (British paratroopers) were fired at.

An investigation is going on and it will be extremely thorough," he said.

Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai told a news conference on Sunday he had been briefed about the incident by ISAF commander Major General John McColl.

"There was some sort of incident of firing (on the ISAF post)," Karzai said.

"The circumstances are not yet clear .- but it doesn't look like any seriousorganised attempt on the ISAF forces."

It was the first time members of the British-led, U.N.-mandated ISAF had come
under fire.