The U.S. military was investigating yesterday whether it was an accident or a booby-trap that killed seven of its soldiers and left an eighth missing at a weapons cache Thursday -- the deadliest day for the Americans in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. Three other soldiers were wounded along with their Afghan translator in the blast Thursday some 90 miles southwest of Kabul, near the city of Ghazni. Afghan state TV broadcast a message of condolence from President Hamid Karzai to President Bush, calling it "another sacrifice of your soldiers for peace and stability in Afghanistan."
Afghan officials called it an accident, but Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman at U.S. military headquarters in Kabul, the capital, said its investigators were still looking into the explosion. The blast occurred as the soldiers worked around the cache of rifle ammunition and mortar rounds in the village of Dehe Hendu in Ghazni province. Ghazni provincial Gov. Haji Asadullah Khan said an American patrol had happened across an arms cache dating from the struggle against Soviet occupation in the 1980s. He said the American soldiers were collecting the ammunition when one "went off by accident." "I’m sure it is not a Taliban conspiracy," Khan said.
| Antique ammunition can become unstable, I guess... |
Hilferty said nothing indicated "active enemy activity" at the site but said investigators were exploring the possibility that "it could have been a booby-trap." He said it was unclear whether the soldiers were handling the weapons. He gave no details of where the weapons were concealed. Khan declined to lead reporters to the scene, and U.S. soldiers at the gate of a newly established base in Ghazni, a city of some 30,000 residents -- where American troops in Humvees were on patrol yesterday -- also refused to comment. |