American Is Held After Shooting of Civilians in Afghanistan PANJWAY, Afghanistan A United States service member walked out of a military

bas e in a rural district of southern Afghanistan on Sunday and opened fire on three nearby houses, killing at least 16 civilians, including several children, local villagers and provincial officials said. The shooting risks further inciting anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan and t roubling a relationship that had already been brought to a new low by the burnin g of Korans at an American military base last month. The American Embassy in Afg hanistan quickly issued a statement on Sunday urging calm. The NATO-led coalition said in a statement on Sunday that a United States servic e member had been detained after an incident in Kandahar Province, in the south of the country, and that a number of civilians had been killed. Villagers in Belandi in the Panjway district of Kandahar, where the shooting too k place, said the service member had attacked three houses, killing at least 16 in total. Five other villagers were wounded, they said. After the killings, villagers collected the bodies, and drove them to a nearby A merican military base to protest. Burn marks could be seen on some of the bodies , and the villagers said that five of the dead were young girls, age 6 or younge r. Panjway, a rural suburb of Kandahar, was traditionally a Taliban stronghold. It was a focus of the United States surge in 2010 and was the scene of heavy fighti ng. The governor of Kandahar Province, Tooryalai Wesa, condemned the shooting, altho ugh he could not immediately confirm the number of people killed. A coalition sp okesman in Kabul, Capt. Justin Brockhoff, said that it was not clear what had le d to the incident. He said the civilians wounded in the shooting were taken to a coalition hospital where they were being treated. One of the houses attacked in the village belonged to a tribal elder, according to a person from the village. We don t know why he killed people, said the villager, Aminullah, who like many Afghans goes by a single name. Aminullah said the sold ier was alone. There was no fighting or attacks. In the statement, the United States military raced to head off Afghan outrage. Th is is a deeply regrettable incident and we extend our thoughts and concerns to t he families involved, the statement said. It went on to say that American forces, in cooperation with the Afghan authoriti es, would investigate the incident. In its comments, the American Embassy also sought to ease tensions, offering its deepest condolences to the families of the victims of today s tragic shooting. We are saddened by this violent act against our Afghan friends, . the statement said

In a separate incident, four Afghans were killed and three wounded on Friday whe n coalition helicopters apparently hunting Taliban insurgents fired instead on v illagers in Kapisa province in eastern Afghanistan, according to Abdul Hakim Akh ondzada, governor of Tagab district in Kapisa. Last month, the burning of the Korans touched off nationwide rioting and increas ed the targeting of American troops, resulting in at least 29 Afghans dead and 6

American soldiers killed. The results of the official military inquiry into the Koran burnings are still a waited, including any decision on what kind of disciplinary action may be faced by the American service members identified as being directly linked to the incid ent. The upheaval provoked by the Koran burnings put a temporary halt to cooperation between the Afghans and Americans, and disrupted planning for the military withd rawal. But relations seemed somewhat back on track after the two governments on Friday broke an impasse on a long-term strategic partnership deal by agreeing for the A fghans to assume control of the main coalition prison in six months. In another incident in January, American officials had to contend with the fallo ut from a video that showed four United States Marines urinating on the corpses of what appeared to be the corpses of three Taliban members. In 2010, a rogue group of American soldiers, whose members patrolled roads and s mall villages, also near Kandahar, killed three Afghan civilians for sport in a series of crimes. The soldier accused of being the ringleader of the group was c onvicted of three counts of murder by an American military panel in November. Taimoor Shah from reported from Panjway, Kandahar Province, and Graham Bowley fr om Kabul.