Bereaved Soviet Soldier Slain Trying to Go Home, Paper Says

Soviet troops and East German police shot and killed a bereaved Soviet soldier who abandoned his unit and tried to go home after learning that his brother had been killed in action in Afghanistan, a West Berlin newspaper reported Sunday.

The soldier was shot more than 80 times when a taxi he had commandeered ran into a roadblock, the daily Berliner Morgenpost said, quoting reports of travelers returning from East Germany.

The incident occurred about a month ago in Jena, a city of 100,000 people about 135 miles southwest of Berlin, the newspaper reported.

It said the soldier had applied for a leave from his base in Jena to return to the Soviet Union after his parents informed him that his brother, also a Soviet soldier, had died fighting Islamic guerrillas in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan in December, 1979, to oversee the ouster of one Marxist government and install another pro-Soviet Communist regime. It has fought Islamic rebels there since.

Machine Gun, Ammunition

When his leave application was rejected, the soldier left his unit with a machine gun and about 150 rounds of ammunition, according to the Morgenpost. He hired a taxi, then forced the driver out of the car, it reported.

Soviet troops and East German police set up roadblocks after learning of the taxi theft, it said. The fleeing soldier attempted to ram through a roadblock near the Jena train station and fell out of the car, the Morgenpost reported.

Before he could get up, he was riddled with more than 80 bullets, the newspaper quoted witnesses as saying. The wall of a drugstore by the train station remains pockmarked with gunshots, they said.

The Morgenpost cited no sources for its report except the travelers returning from East Germany.

Western estimates put the number of Soviet troops based in East Germany at 380,000. They reportedly are under strict orders to stay in or near their barracks, away from the general population.