An Afghan soldier opened fire on his colleagues inside a US military base Thursday, killing five and wounding six others before he was himself shot dead, the US military said. The soldier had just finished a spell of guard duty at the base in the southern Afghan province of Helmand and the motive for the shooting was unclear, said a US statement.
The shooting occurred at the base in Helmand's Gerishk district, some 530 kilometres (around 330 miles) south-east of the capital Kabul, Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP.
"An investigation is underway. We don't know whether the shooting was by a mistake or intentional," he told AFP.
The wounded Afghan soldiers were evacuated to a US military hospital in the main southern city of Kandahar, said the statement without giving details of their conditions. Meanwhile police in Helmand said they shot dead a Taleban commander and captured his deputy when rebels attacked an Afghan police convoy.