February 22, 2002	Friday	Zilhaj 9, 1422

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KABUL, Feb 21: British paratroopers returned fire at unidentified gunmen after they came under attack during a routine patrol in the western part of the Afghan capital, a press officer said on Thursday.

Captain Graham Dunlop said there were no casualties on either side in the shooting which occurred around 8:30 pm (1600 GMT) on Wednesday, the second such incident in the area in less than a week.

“A British patrol came under fire and they returned fire,” said Dunlop, a press officer for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) based in Kabul.

“One Afghan police patrol which was in the same area also returned fire. There were no casualties.”

But an Afghan interior ministry official told a different story to the official Bakhter news agency, saying local police started shooting at a gang of criminals while British troops were patrolling nearby in vehicles.

“The official said there were some people trying to steal something in the fifth district of western Kabul and the police fired at them,” Bakhter foreign secretary Khaleel Menawee said, adding that the British forces did not shoot at all.

Dunlop said the incident was under investigation.

“I’m aware of a couple of different versions of events. The ISAF position remains unchanged and this is the reason we have investigations, to establish the facts,” he said.

He said ISAF would not be intimidated by the incident, the second alleged shooting at British troops in the war-ravaged western part of the city in five days.

“We will continue our tasks as normal because the job we are doing here is very important and we do not want to be deterred from fulfilling our task,” Mr Dunlop said.

Another ISAF officer, who did not want to be identified, told AFP that armed criminal elements made the western part of the city particularly dangerous for foreign troops.

British troops last week said they killed one Afghan man and wounded five other people in a western suburb when they came under fire on Saturday for the first time since their deployment in Kabul in mid-December.—AFP