Two civilians were killed and another wounded in separate incidents Sunday by NATO forces fearing suicide bomb attacks in Afghanistan, officials said. German soldiers operating in the northern city of Kunduz killed one civilian and wounded another, when the two men approached the soldiers in a car travelling at high speed, Mohammad Razaq Yaqoubi, Kunduz provincial police chief told the German Press Agency dpa. The soldiers opened fire when the men refused to slow down, despite warnings, he said, adding that one man later died in a hospital. German military authorities confirmed that their troops opened fire on the speeding vehicle. Spokesman Jurgen Mertins noted that there had been threats of a suicide attack, which led the Germans to set up a checkpoint that snarled traffic. The vehicle that was fired upon had attempted to break out of the traffic snarl, he said. Meanwhile in a similar incident, troops opened fire on a civilian vehicle that approached a NATO convoy in Garmsir district in Helmand province Sunday morning, the alliance said in a statement. "The vehicle had no headlights, and was travelling at a high rate of speed at the time of the incident," the statement said. "After firing three to five rounds into the grill of the vehicle, it stopped. "One civilian received a gunshot wound to the chest," it said, adding that the man died of his wounds after he was evacuated to a military hospital.
