Italian Killed in Apparent Retaliation for U.S. Strikes

An Italian army officer working for the United Nations died Saturday, one day after being shot in Kabul, the Afghan capital, apparently in retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan.

Afghan authorities said two Pakistani suspects had been arrested for trial under Islamic law.

The body of Lt. Col. Carmine Calo, who was working as deputy military advisor with the U.N. Special Mission to Afghanistan, was brought to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, on Saturday afternoon to be sent to Rome, U.N. officials said.

A Pakistan-based Afghan news service quoted the supreme leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban Islamic movement, Mullah Mohammed Omar, as saying that two Pakistani men had been arrested for the Kabul attack and would be tried under Islamic Sharia law.

Earlier, another Pakistan-based Afghan news service said four people had been arrested--all non-Afghans.

Acting head of the U.N. mission, James Ngobi, quoting the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad, said in a statement earlier that the killers had been arraigned before a military court.

A French political affairs officer with the mission, Eric Lavertu, was shot in the hand in the same incident but has been released from the hospital, Ngobi said.

Italy’s charge d’affaires in Islamabad, Lellio Crivellar, has said the shooting was a reaction to U.S. raids against what Washington said was a chemical weapons factory near Khartoum and guerrilla training camps in Afghanistan.

“It’s clear that this was not an error but a reaction to yesterday’s American attack,” Crivellar said on Friday. “Whoever fired the shots did not hit the wrong target. The target was very easily recognizable.”

Ngobi said the two U.N. officials traveling in a U.N. vehicle were intercepted by a truck carrying a number of gunmen.

“One of the gunmen jumped out of the truck and started firing deliberately at the U.N. officials, injuring both of them severely,” he said.

He said both officials were taken to the International Committee of the Red Cross hospital in Kabul.