Bulgaria Blames U.S. Troops for Fatal Iraq Shooting By Michael Winfrey
SOFIA (Reuters) - U.S. ally Bulgaria blamed U.S. troops on Monday for the fatal shooting of one of its soldiers in Iraq and demanded punishment of those responsible.
A Bulgarian inquiry into the shooting last Friday found that soldier Gurdi Gurdev -- Bulgaria's eighth casualty since the start of the war in March 2003 -- was almost certainly killed by "friendly fire" from nearby U.S. forces.
On the same day, U.S. soldiers shot dead an Italian secret service agent as he was taking freed hostage journalist Giuliana Sgrena to safety.
Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov said Gurdev was killed when his unit shot warning rounds in an attempt to halt an Iraqi vehicle and then came under heavy fire.
"Someone started shooting at our patrol from the west, and in the same direction, 150 meters away, there was a unit from the U.S. Army," Svinarov told a news conference.
"The result (of the investigation) gives us enough grounds to believe the death of rifleman Gurdi Gurdev was caused by friendly fire."
Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg and President Georgi Parvanov summoned the U.S. ambassador in Sofia, and Parvanov later criticized U.S.-led operations as badly coordinated.
"This is a grave incident, and the confirmation of the facts prompts the conclusion that there are problems in the coordination and operational interaction among the allies," the president said in a statement.
"Bulgaria has undertaken a thorough investigation and will demand punishment for the guilty," the statement said.
Bulgarian Army Chief of Staff Nikola Kolev sent a letter to U.S. military chiefs asking for an investigation to clarify what happened and prevent similar incidents in the future, Svinarov said.
Bulgaria, which joined NATO last year and is an accession candidate for the European Union, has a 430-strong peacekeeping battalion stationed in the Iraqi town of Diwaniya.
Saxe-Coburg's government is one of the United States' staunchest allies, but its military presence in Iraq is unpopular among the Balkan state's 8 million people. Analysts say it could play a role in summer parliamentary elections.
The opposition Socialists have a wide lead over Saxe-Coburg's National Movement for Simeon II party and have promised to withdraw Bulgaria's troops from Iraq if it wins the ballot and leads the next government.
(Additional reporting by Kremena Miteva)
U.S. Major General Eric T. Olson speaks during a news conference in Kabul March 7, 2005. Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has lost control of the insurgency in Afghanistan and the number of attacks has fallen dramatically, Olson said. (Ahmad Masood/Reuters)
British Worker Shot Dead in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan - Gunmen shot and killed a Briton who worked with Afghanistan's development ministry in a nighttime attack in downtown Kabul, police said Tuesday.
Two vehicles, one of them a black landcruiser, followed the British man's pickup truck then drove ahead of him and blocked his way, Gen. Sher Agha, a Kabul police commander, told The Associated Press.
From inside the landcruiser, an unidentified gunman opened fire, killing the man, before driving away, he said.
The attack happened about 10.15 p.m. Monday in front of the main guest house for U.N. workers in Kabul and the Dutch Embassy, he said. Agha did not name the victim.
The British Embassy could not immediately confirm the incident.
Agha said police were investigating the shooting.
U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva confirmed that a foreign national had been shot dead late Monday in Kabul, but said he was not U.N. personnel.
Since holding its first direct presidential elections in October, Afghanistan has enjoyed a period of relative calm, marked by a decline in attacks by Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents that have plagued restive areas of the south and east.
But in November, three foreign election workers were kidnapped in Kabul by a Taliban splinter group. They were released unharmed a month later.
In December, a Turkish engineer working on a U.S.-sponsored road project was kidnapped and killed by unidentified kidnappers in eastern Kunar province.