5 British soldiers killed in southern Afghanistan

[November 04, 2009]  KABUL (AP) -- An Afghan policeman opened fire on British soldiers in the volatile southern province of Helmand, killing five, British and Afghan authorities said Wednesday, raising concerns about discipline within the Afghan forces and possible infiltration by insurgents.

The incident came almost exactly a month after an Afghan policeman on patrol with U.S. soldiers opened fire on the Americans, killing two before fleeing.

Training and operating jointly with Afghan police and soldiers is key to NATO's strategy of dealing with the spreading Taliban-led insurgency and, ultimately, allowing international forces to leave Afghanistan.

Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, who was the main challenger to President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan's recent fraud-marred election, said the continuing violence showed the Karzai administration had failed to bring peace to the country despite assistance from international forces.

"As far as the presence of international forces in Afghanistan is concerned, eight years of golden opportunity we have missed. You were here. Your soldiers were here, and they have made sacrifices for bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan," Abdullah said during a news conference in Kabul.

"But eight years down the road we still need more troops. In the absence of a credible and reliable and legitimate partner, more soldiers, more resources" are needed, he said.

The five British soldiers were killed in Helmand's Nad-e-Ali district on Tuesday afternoon, Britain's Defense Ministry said, bringing the total number of British forces who have died in Afghanistan to 229.

Six other British soldiers and two Afghan policemen were wounded in the attack, NATO forces headquarters in Kabul said in a joint statement with the Interior Ministry.

Britain has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, the second largest force after the United States. Last month, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced plans to increase troop numbers in the country by about 500.

"The soldiers concerned were mentoring Afghan national police. They were working inside and living inside an Afghan national police checkpoint, just outside Nad-e-Ali district center," Lt. Col. David Wakefield, spokesman for the British forces, told Sky News. "It is our initial understanding that an individual Afghan policeman possibly acting in conjunction with one other started firing inside the checkpoint before fleeing from the scene."

A Helmand police official also said the attacker was a policeman.

NATO said the attacker's motives were unclear, and that the incident was being investigated by Afghan authorities and Britain's Royal Military Police.

The commander of international forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, said he discussed the shooting with Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar, who "gave me his assurance that this incident will be fully and transparently investigated."

"We will not let this event deter our resolve to building a partnership with the Afghan National Security Forces to provide for Afghanistan's future," he said in the joint statement.

Atmar said the attack "appears to be an isolated incident that is being jointly investigated."

This is not the first time such an incident has occurred. Last year over a period of less than a month, Afghan policemen twice attacked American soldiers in the east of the country. In October 2008, a policeman threw a grenade and opened fire on a U.S. foot patrol, killing one soldier, while the previous month, an officer opened fire at a Paktia police station, killing a soldier and wounding three before he was fatally shot.

Peter Galbraith, the former top American official at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan who had called attention to fraud charges in the country's presidential election, told British radio that police training and recruiting had been "rushed" in Afghanistan.

"It is a terrible tragedy but it is, I won't quite say inevitable, but it is not surprising," he told BBC Radio 4.

"The process of police training and recruiting has been very rushed. Normally the police get an eight-week training course. That is actually very short and there isn't a lot of vetting of police before they are hired."

Such incidents are not unique to Afghanistan. They have also occurred in Iraq, where U.S. and coalition forces are engaged in a similar process of mentoring and training the Iraqi army and police.

In February, two Iraqi policeman opened fire at a police outpost in Mosul in northern Iraq, killing one American soldier and an interpreter and wounding three other U.S. soldiers. The shooting was the fourth attack in the region since late 2007 with suspected links to Iraqi security units.

In London, Brown extended his condolences to the soldiers' families.

"The death of five brave soldiers in a single incident is a terrible loss," he said. "They fought to make Afghanistan more secure, but above all to make Britain safer from the terrorism and extremism which continues to threaten us from the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Brown insisted he remained committed to ensuring his country's troops had "the best possible support and equipment -- and the right strategy, backed by our international partners, and by a new Afghan government ready to play its part in confronting the challenges Afghanistan faces."

[Associated Press; By ELENA BECATOROS]

Associated Press writers Noor Khan in Kandahar, Heidi Vogt in Kabul and Jennifer Quinn in London contributed to this report.

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