KABUL, Feb 17: Nato soldiers fearing a suicide attack shot and killed an Afghan civilian on Saturday when he ran between vehicles in a convoy in southern Afghanistan, the alliance's military said.

The man had run into a convoy that had stopped near the Kandahar Airfield, the biggest International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base in insurgency-hit southern Afghanistan.

A soldier tried to make the man halt by flashing a light and then firing warning shots. When he did not stop, soldiers fired at and wounded him, ISAF said.

ISAF explosives experts were called to the scene to see if the wounded man was carrying bombs. Once it was established he was not, he was evacuated to an ISAF hospital where he died.

There have been a string of such killings, most of them at security checkpoints in southern Afghanistan.—APP