May 14, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 11, 1424

KABUL, May 13: A soldier was arrested after international peacekeepers patrolling north of the Afghan capital were fired upon Tuesday, injuring two Norwegian soldiers in the latest of a wave of attacks on Western and pro-government targets.

The attack on the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) patrol occurred as it travelled across the Shomali plain, some 20kms north of Kabul, Bjorn Johannessen, the charge d’affairs for the Norwegian embassy said.

“They were shot at. Two of them have been hit. The injured are now under medical treatment in the ISAF military hospital,” ISAF spokesman Colonel Thomas Loebbering said.

One of the Norwegians was seriously wounded, the second less critically, Johannessen said.

Amanullah Gazar, the commander of the 8th army division in Mir Bacha Kot district north of Kabul, said a soldier of the division believed to be a former member of the deposed Taliban had been arrested over the shooting.

“The gunman is called Ibrahim, and he is a soldier with the 916 unit of the 8th division. He was a Taliban fighter before joining the 8th division,” Gazar said.

“He was hit in the hand and head by returning fire from the ISAF soldiers after he tried to take flight,” he added.

Some 4,700 soldiers from 28 different countries are currently deployed with ISAF, under the joint command of Germany and the Netherlands, to help maintain order in Kabul.

The international force has patrolled Kabul and its environs since its creation under an Afghan power-sharing agreement reached in the German city of Bonn in December 2001 following the fall of the Taliban militia.—AFP