Asia

Home page

Asia

Another 3 Australian soldiers injured in Afghanistan

09 November 2011 02:21 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Another three Australian soldiers were injured in Afghanistan when an Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier opened fire to his colleagues, Australian Defense Force confirmed on Wednesday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The incident came just 10 days after three Australian soldiers were killed and seven others were injured in a similar attack in Afghanistan.

The ANA soldier is on the run after he shot and wounded the three Australians and two of his colleagues in the Charmestan region on Tuesday.

According to Defense force chief David Hurley, there was not enough information to decide whether Tuesday’s attack was linked to the earlier incident.

"It is too early to speculate that the two incidents are linked, " General Hurley told reporters in Canberra, adding "I stress that there is no simple one-line explanation to this incident or the previous incident."

He said that it was a highly-complex issue and there were many factors at play that would require further examination and analysis.

All five soldiers received non-life threatening wounds and have been taken to the military hospital at Tarin Kot in Uruzgan province.

As a result of the incident, Australian troops disarmed about 30 other ANA soldiers who were at the forward base following the shooting.

Australian Defense Association head Neil James said that the latest shooting would have a serious impact on the trust between the Australian and Afghan soldiers in Afghanistan.

While Greens Senator Christine Milne has used the incident to renew her party’s call for Australian troops to get out of Afghanistan, Labor and Opposition members of parliament (MPs) are backing Australia’s troop commitment to Afghanistan.

Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg, who visited Afghanistan earlier this year, said the incident was "another painful reminder" of the difficulty of the mission.

But he said Australian troops were making a real difference on the ground by building schools and training Afghan soldiers and police.

Labor backbencher Ed Husic said Australia’s commitment was not an easy job and withdrawing troops had to be done in a way that maintained stability in Afghanistan.

"Bear in my mind this is the result of a need to go in and tackle al-Qaeda,"he said.

About 1,550 Australian troops are currently training and mentoring some 3,500 Afghan soldiers.

The government is planning on a withdrawal of most troops by 2014, and is considering leaving behind special forces, based in the capital Kabul and Kandahar.