By empty (10/30/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Gunmen opened fire on British soldiers in Afghanistan\'s main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, killing one and wounding five, witnesses and the ISAF peacekeeping force told AFP. Attackers on a motorbike and in a car opened fire on an unmarked vehicle of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) near a junction in front of the city\'s famous Blue Mosque, witnesses said Saturday. The gunmen tried to flee on foot and four of them were detained by onlookers and handed over to police, they said.
Gunmen opened fire on British soldiers in Afghanistan\'s main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, killing one and wounding five, witnesses and the ISAF peacekeeping force told AFP. Attackers on a motorbike and in a car opened fire on an unmarked vehicle of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) near a junction in front of the city\'s famous Blue Mosque, witnesses said Saturday. The gunmen tried to flee on foot and four of them were detained by onlookers and handed over to police, they said. \"One is dead and five were wounded,\" ISAF spokesman Warrant Officer Cosimo Argentieri said in the capital Kabul. The defence ministry in London said the troops had been attacked as they were moving between two bases. Head of security for the police in Mazar-i-Sharif, Emam Udin, confirmed the attack saying four people had been arrested. The city has seen relatively few of the regular attacks in southern and eastern Afghanistan that are blamed on fighters allied to the ousted Taliban regime and other militant groups. Taliban loyalists vowed to overthrow the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai after the fundamentalist regime was ousted in a US-led campaign in late 2001. ISAF has been based in Afghanistan since 2001 and came under the command of NATO in 2003. The force numbers more than 11,000 troops from 26 NATO and 11 non-NATO nations who provide security assistance in Kabul and the northern and western regions of Afghanistan. There are about 300 British soldiers in the force, an ISAF official said. Officials could not immediately say if Saturday\'s fatality was the deployment\'s first in Afghanistan. (AFP)