U.S. friendly fire kills Canadian soldier

TORONTO – U.S. jets mistakenly strafed Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan on Monday, killing one and bringing to five the number of Canadian troops killed during a major push against the Taliban over the weekend.

The deaths come as domestic support for the war is sliding and political opposition growing, and the fatalities are certain to fuel the controversy in Canada over the country’s role in supporting NATO and the United States in the 5-year-old Afghan war.

Four of the battlefield deaths occurred Sunday as the Canadians attempted to sweep Taliban guerrillas from Panjwai, an area of farms and poppy fields in the southern province of Kandahar that has been a staging area for attacks against Canadian troops. The operation, code-named Medusa, met what commanders acknowledged was surprising resistance.

Just after dawn on Monday, another Canadian contingent was camped in an open area when two A-10 Warthog ground-attack planes flown by U.S. pilots under NATO command strafed its camp. One soldier was killed and about 30 others suffered what officers described as mostly light wounds.

NATO officials said the planes had been called in for support by other Canadian troops during the fighting. Canadian and NATO officers were quick to describe the incident as an unfortunate consequence of war.

The accident “is very regrettable,” said Lt. Gen. David Rich-ards, the NATO forces commander in Afghanistan. “But the task they were set is extremely important – perhaps pivotal in some respects – to the operation we are conducting here.”

In a similar incident earlier in the Afghan war, four Canadian soldiers were killed in 2002 when a U.S. plane mistakenly dropped a bomb on Canadian forces as they were training. That incident caused bitter feelings for many in Canada and has lingered as a rhetorical touchstone for those who oppose the alliance of Canada with the United States in the war in Afghanistan.

Thirty-two Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002.

Jack Layton, a member of Parliament from the opposition New Democratic Party, this weekend called Afghanistan “the wrong mission” for Canada, which has 2,300 troops in the country. Most are stationed near Kandahar, a stronghold of the Taliban. Layton called for a return home of the troops by February.

Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor toured Afghanistan over the weekend to boost the morale of the soldiers and offered an upbeat assessment for the country.

“My expectation is that over the next year, the security situation will improve,” he told reporters in Kandahar. “I believe support for the mission is solid among Canadians.”

But opinion polls released over the weekend – before the most recent deaths – showed a continuing slide in support for the war in Afghanistan and for the foreign policy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.