KANDAHAR (voa) – A U.S. F-16 fighter jet has mistakenly dropped a 225-kilo bomb on a group of Canadian soldiers during a training exercise with American forces near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
Canadian military officials say four Canadian soldiers were killed and eight others were wounded, some seriously. A U.S. defense official says the pilot of the plane dropped the bomb Thursday because he mistook a live-fire exercise on the ground for hostile fire.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien told Canada’s parliament President Bush has promised him full cooperation in an investigation of the incident. Officials say the site of the accident is a former al-Qaida training camp now used daily by coalition forces for live-fire exercises. Canadian forces are fighting alongside U.S. and European troops seeking to hunt down remnants of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reports at least three people have been killed in a bomb blast in a busy market in the town of Khost, in eastern Afghanistan. According to the report, the blast occurred early Thursday, a few hundred meters from the town’s military hospital. It was not clear if the explosion was politically motivated or the result of a feud between rival Afghan groups.
The report says it was the third explosion in Khost since the ouster of Afghanistan’s Taleban Islamic regime late last year. The Taleban and al-Qaida are known to have wide support in the town, located near the Pakistani border.
