Afghanistan ‘Friendly Fire’ Inquiry Set

Allied military forces are the target of an investigation of whether “friendly fire” killed an American medic and a Canadian machine gunner in southern Afghanistan last week, a Canadian commander said Tuesday.

“The possibility of friendly fire -- I say the possibility -- did not come from the air. It was not about bombs,” said Canadian army Brig. Gen. David Fraser, commander of the U.S.-led coalition’s multinational brigade in the south, Canadian press reported from the city of Kandahar. “So we are now investigating where this possible friendly fire came from, but it was not from an aircraft of any type.”

Army National Guard Sgt. 1st Class John T. Stone, 52, of Turnbridge, Vt., and Canadian army Pvt. Robert Costall, 22, were killed March 29 after suspected Taliban fighters attacked a small, remote base in the Sangin district of Helmand province.

Three Canadians, a U.S. service member and an Afghan soldier were wounded in the battle, which began about 1:30 a.m. Stone was shot several times, the Vermont National Guard reported after his death.

American and Canadian troops joined Afghan soldiers that were being trained at the forward operating base in a counterattack, backed by a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber and Apache attack helicopters along with British Harrier jets.

“This fight was going on all day,” Fraser said. “The attacks on that base came from multiple directions. It was an attack at night. There was lots of fire going on there.”

The possibility that friendly fire killed the two soldiers underscores the complexity of the war against Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in southern Afghanistan as American troops come under foreign command.

This spring, Fraser took charge of coalition troops in the south, including U.S., Canadian and British forces. The Canadian general answers to the coalition’s overall commander, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry.

Coalition forces stressed that a swift counterattack last week by American, Canadian and Afghan troops inflicted heavy damage on the guerrillas. The Taliban called its attack part of a broader spring offensive.

“At least 12 insurgents were killed in the immediate vicinity of the operating base,” a military statement said Tuesday. “Another 20 were killed after coalition forces pursued them. In the course of their pursuit, coalition forces destroyed two Taliban headquarters buildings and overran a Taliban compound.

“The coalition forces discovered and destroyed large caches of munitions, including weapons and materials for making improvised explosive devices,” the statement added.

Lt. Mike Cody, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, declined to say who was in command of the remote base during the battle. “That is part of the investigation, and we won’t release any details until it is concluded,” he said.

Eikenberry concluded that an investigation was warranted after reviewing reports of the combat, the military said. A joint U.S., Canadian and Afghan team will investigate the incident. Each national contingent will issue a separate report.

Gen. Zahir Azemi, spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said that after the inquiry was announced Tuesday morning, he spent the rest of the day trying to get details but found no Afghan officials aware of the investigation. “I contacted everyone in the Defense Ministry, including the chief of staff, but they had no information,” he said.

The U.S. Army announced last month that it was launching a criminal investigation of the death of former National Football League star Pat Tillman, who was killed in 2004 during a firefight in eastern Afghanistan.

The Army initially reported that Tillman was killed by the enemy as he fought to seize a hill near the Pakistan border. But weeks later, it said Tillman, a member of the elite Rangers, was killed by members of his own unit as he tried to take cover.

In 2002, four Canadian soldiers were killed and eight hurt when an Illinois Air National Guard pilot dropped a laser-guided bomb near Kandahar. The pilot was found guilty of dereliction of duty, fined and barred from flying Air Force aircraft.