KABUL - A man dressed in Afghan army uniform shot dead two US soldiers Sunday outside Afghanistan`s main, high security prison on the outskirts of the capital Kabul, the US-led coalition said.
The attacker was then shot dead by Afghan troops and first indications were that he was a rogue soldier, but this was under investigation, coalition spokesman Major Sheldon Smith told AFP.
"He fired shots into a vehicle being driven by US service personnel as they were leaving the prison. This action resulted in the death of two soldiers and left two other soldiers wounded," Smith said.
Afghan soldiers stationed outside the jail "rushed to the aid of the US personnel and fatally shot the rogue soldier," he said.
It was not known if an earlier event had led to the shooting, or if the attacker was linked to Taliban insurgents behind most of the unrest in Afghanistan, Smith added.
The mid-afternoon shooting occurred outside the Pul-i-Charki jail on the outskirts of Kabul. The jail houses criminals, Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters.
The soldiers attacked were mentors to the prison`s personnel, Smith said.
The US-led coalition, which led the offensive into Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban regime in 2001, has troops embedded with local security forces to help them rebuild.
"We have personnel there at the prison. They are mentoring and training the Afghans on how to run a prison properly," the spokesman said.
Around 50 foreign soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan this year, most of them in incidents linked to the insurgency. Nearly 30 of them were US nationals.
The United States leads the counterinsurgency and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, which it invaded after the Taliban government`s failure to hand over Al-Qaeda leaders in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
The US has about 27,000 soldiers in Afghanistan with the coalition and a separate NATO-led force.
05/06/2007 19:07 GMT