M A I N   N E W S

US-Pak armies clash, 2 killed

Washington, January 1
Two Pakistani soldiers were killed in a US bombing on an Islamic religious school near the Afghan border even as an American was wounded in the first-ever clash between the two armies after the war on terror in Afghanistan began.

The US military said one bomb hit the Islamic religious school in south Waziristan, the tribal administrative zone on the Pakistani side of the Pak-Afghan border, where some Pakistani Border Scouts had taken shelter.

The troops of the two allies on the war against terrorism clashed at Shkin in Afghanistan’s Paktika province, south of Kabul, on Sunday.

One US soldier was wounded in the shootout, which prompted the US forces to call in an F-16 warplane, that dropped a 500-pound bomb on the Pakistanis to end the clash, the Washington Post said today.

Quoting a statement by the US military authorities at Bagram, north of Kabul, it said the soldier, whose identity was withheld, was flown to Germany for treatment.

It said the military authorities of the two countries sought to play down the clash and stressed that both the USA and Pakistan remain determined to cooperate in hunting down remnants of the Taliban and the Al-Qaida.

The newspaper said the shooting had again raised the question of whether some Pakistani soldiers and tribal leaders still sympathised with their Taliban neighbours, whom they had long supported until the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. UNI

7 killed at wedding

Kabul, January 1
Seven persons were killed and six injured when a grenade was dropped at a wedding celebration in eastern Afghanistan, the state radio reported today. The Kabul Radio said the incident took place at the village of Zormat, in the province of Paktika near the border with Pakistan. It said the grenade exploded while revellers were firing rockets and throwing grenades to celebrate the wedding. It said all the dead and injured were members of the wedding party. Reuters