Gunmen kill U.S., Pakistani soldiers

Gunmen opened fire Monday on U.S., Pakistani and Afghan officials meeting near the volatile Afghan-Pakistani frontier. An American soldier and a Pakistani soldier were killed and several others wounded, officials said.

The border fighting, about a mile inside Pakistani territory, coincided with continuing civil strife over Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s efforts to sideline the chief justice of the Supreme Court, a struggle that threatens the general’s grip on power.

Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, has been virtually shut down by the unrest, which has left more than 40 people dead since the weekend. Shops were closed and most public transport halted as the opposition called for a general strike. Paramilitary police were given shoot-to-kill orders against anyone involved in street violence.

In Islamabad, the capital, opposition factions disrupted a session of parliament, shouting in reference to Musharraf, “The general is a killer!”

Adding to political tensions, a Supreme Court official was killed by gunmen before dawn Monday in his home in Islamabad, police and his family said.

Lawyers for the suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, said the slain court official, Syed Hamid Raza, would have been an important witness in the legal battle over Chaudhry’s status.

Chaudhry is at the center of a 2-month-old confrontation between Musharraf and opposition forces. The chief justice is seen as a potential obstacle to the president’s plans to have himself reelected later this year by lawmakers.

Police said the killing apparently came in the course of an attempted robbery, but Raza’s family suggested the motive for the shooting was political.

“You should have protected him, and now my children need protection as well,” Raza’s widow, Shabana, addressing Pakistani authorities, told Reuters news agency. She said she did not believe he was killed by would-be thieves.

Chaudhry’s case is being heard by a panel of judges, but the proceedings have been put on hold.

The standoff over Chaudhry poses the most serious challenge to Musharraf’s rule since he took power in a 1999 military coup.

The border violence, the worst in years between the two nations’ troops, broke out as a convoy was carrying military officials from a meeting in the Pakistani town of Teri Mangal, close to the frontier. In addition to the fatalities, three U.S. soldiers, four Pakistani troops and an Afghan interpreter were reported hurt.

Both Pakistani and Afghan officials said they were investigating the incident, which came a day after Afghan and Pakistani troops exchanged fire across the frontier, killing at least two Afghans.

Afghan officials put the toll at more than a dozen.

The talks were aimed at easing tensions along the border, a lawless tribal area that American intelligence officials say Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters have turned into a staging ground for attacks against Western forces in Afghanistan.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s force in Afghanistan said in a statement that the delegation was “ambushed by unknown assailants.”

Afghanistan condemned the border strife, calling it an “invasion” by Pakistani forces. One report, denied by Pakistani officials, said a gunman disguised as a Pakistani soldier set off Monday’s gun battle.

Authorities said the attack on the U.S.-Afghan convoy in the Kurram tribal region began after a four-hour meeting held to discuss border violence. The area was immediately cordoned off by Pakistani troops, Pakistani officials said.

A statement by Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry said Sunday’s border clash was “contrary to all international norms.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Musharraf for nearly a year have traded accusations of failing to halt militant activity and movements along their common frontier. The two leaders met last month in Turkey and agreed to share intelligence on threats by Islamic militants.

Meanwhile, new signs emerged of the rift between the United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan over how best to deal with the resurgent Taliban. Some European officials have warned that tactics such as airstrikes on areas where insurgents are thought to be hiding are too imprecise, endangering noncombatants.

German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung expressed unease over the rising toll of civilian casualties in Afghanistan during NATO operations, saying such killings had poisoned public opinion against Western forces.

NATO acknowledged last week that an unspecified number of civilian casualties had occurred in fighting in southern Afghanistan that local authorities said killed more than 40 villagers.

This month, a senior U.S. commander issued an extraordinary public apology for U.S. Marines’ fire on civilians, which killed more than a dozen people, after the Americans’ convoy was targeted in March by a suicide attacker outside the eastern city of Jalalabad.

king@latimes.com

Special correspondent Ali reported from Peshawar and Times staff writer King from Istanbul, Turkey.