Rogue US soldier kills 16 in Afghan rampage

Sixteen Afghans including women and children were killed in their homes by a rogue US soldier in a pre-dawn rampage Sunday, plunging relations between the two countries into a new crisis. Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the slaughter as "unforgivable".
"When Afghan people are killed deliberately by US forces this action is murder and terror and an unforgivable action," Karzai said in statement.
US President Barack Obama called Karzai "to express his shock and sadness" and vowed his administration would fully investigate the killing spree, the White House said. Nato's International Security Assistance Force said it had arrested a soldier over the incident and the commander, General John Allen, condemned "this deeply appalling incident".
The American soldier entered the homes of civilians in southern Kandahar province and killed 16 people including nine children and three women, according to Karzai's statement.
It quoted a wounded 16-year-old, who was shot in the leg, as telling Karzai by phone that the US soldier entered their home in the dark, woke up his family members and then shot them. "The government and the people of Afghanistan demand an explanation from the United States government of this incident," Karzai said. In the phone call to Karzai, Obama "extended his condolences to the people of Afghanistan, and made clear his administration's commitment to establish the facts as quickly as possible and to hold fully accountable anyone responsible," the White House said.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also called Karzai and assured him that a "full investigation" was under way.
The US embassy in Kabul sent out an alert to its citizens in Afghanistan warning that as a result of the shooting "there is a risk of anti-American feelings and protests in coming days".
An AFP reporter at the scene of the killings counted the bodies of 16 people, including women and children. In one house, an elderly woman screamed: "May God kill the only son of Karzai, so he feels what we feel."
Western sources said the rampage began after a US soldier walked off his base in the early hours of Sunday morning, apparently heavily armed and carrying night-vision equipment. He was arrested outside the base after the shooting by members of the Afghan National Army, the army corps commander in southern Afghanistan, Abdul Hameed, told AFP.
The massacre was the latest in a series of incidents that have badly frayed US-Afghan relations, complicating negotiations on a strategic partnership agreement between the two countries for when US combat operations end in 2014.
The treaty would likely cover the legal status of any US troops remaining in Afghanistan to help Kabul with intelligence, air power and logistics in the fight against Taliban insurgents.
In Iraq, Washington abandoned its pursuit of a strategic partnership deal and pulled out all its troops, leaving no residual force, after failing to get Baghdad to grant its soldiers legal immunity.
The shooting sparked renewed soul-searching in the US about the war, which started in 2001 when an American-led force toppled the Taliban regime in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
"There's something profoundly wrong with how we're approaching the whole region and I think it's going to get substantially worse, not better," Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich told Fox News.
Relations plunged to an all-time low last month after the burning of Korans at a military base near the Afghan capital, sparking anti-US protests in which some 40 people died and forcing Obama to apologise.
During the protests, six American soldiers were killed when Afghan colleagues turned their weapons against them.
But there was no word on what might have motivated the soldier's actions in Kandahar.