Shot New Zealand soldier may have been victim of family feud

Sep 28, 2011, 21:05 GMT

Wellington - A New Zealand special forces soldier who was shot dead in Afghanistan may have been caught up in a family feud, not fighting insurgents as authorities in Wellington claimed, according to a news report on Thursday.

Lance Corporal Leon Smith was shot in the head Wednesday as New Zealand troops supported Afghan forces setting up a cordon around a compound in Wardak province, south-west of Kabul.

Defence chief Lieutenant General Rhys Jones told reporters the compound was suspected of housing Taliban suicide bomb-makers who were preparing for an attack in the capital. He said about 15 of New Zealand's crack Special Air Services troops were supporting a 50-strong squad of the Afghan Crisis Response Unit in an operation to serve an Interior Ministry arrest warrant.

But Bette Dam, a freelance Dutch journalist based in Kabul, told Radio New Zealand that Afghan authorities had told her the soldiers may have been caught up in a family feud and the people in the house being targeted were unarmed.

She said she was told the information that the house was occupied by Taliban bomb-makers was falsely given by a rival family. The governor of Wardak told her an Afghan man who was also killed and nine others who were injured in the gunfight were innocent.

New Zealand defence officials refused comment on the report.

Smith was the second SAS soldier killed in Afghanistan in five weeks. Corporal Doug Grant was shot dead in August when attempting to free hostages at the British Council cultural centre in Kabul.

Leaders of two political parties supporting the centre-right government said Thursday that the SAS unit of nearly 40 men should be brought home, but Prime Minister John Key said they would remain until March as scheduled.

'I definitely regret the loss of our soldiers, but I don't regret the decision that we made to commit the SAS to Afghanistan. They are playing their critical part in trying to free the world from the threat of global terrorism,' he said.