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U.S., Pakistani forces clash on Afghan borderIn another incident, unmanned plane crashes in Pakistan
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A U.S. F-16 bombed an abandoned school where a Pakistani border guard had taken cover after exchanging fire with American soldiers, wounding one, U.S. officials said Wednesday. The wounded soldier was a member of a U.S. patrol assisting a Pakistani unit on a routine mission near Shkin in eastern Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan, according to U.S. military sources in Bagram and Washington. According to a statement released in Bagram, the American patrol encountered a Pakistani border scout on the Afghan side of the border Sunday and asked him to return to the Pakistani side. Instead, the scout opened fire on the U.S. troops with a G-3 rifle, a German-made automatic assault rifle, and retreated with several other individuals to a nearby structure, the statement said. A Pentagon official said the Pakistani forces were "warned extensively" before a U.S. F-16 was called in to provide close air support. The plane dropped one 500-pound bomb on the target area, according to U.S. military officials. Local Pakistanis said two bombs were dropped, not one. Lawmakers in northwestern Pakistan strongly condemned the airstrike. "Pakistan is an independent and sovereign country. The American violation of Pakistani airspace and geographical border is considered an attack on Pakistani sovereignty," said the resolution, which was passed unanimously by the provincial assembly in the North-West Frontier. "This assembly demands the federal government of Pakistan that they should strongly protest to the Americans regarding this incident." While the incident took place in an area where the exact border is in dispute, a U.S. official said both the United States and the Pakistan government agreed the incident took place in Afghanistan. The provincial assembly said the attack occurred within Pakistan, in the town of Angor Adda near the Afghanistan border. Mulana Fazalur Rehman -- head of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, one of the hard-line parties in the region -- warned the U.S. government to stop interfering in Pakistan and demanded the Pakistan federal government do something to stop "this American interference." "We consider this an attack on Pakistan," he said of the school bombing. Another lawmaker from the region said a U.S. helicopter gunship also attacked a mosque in Angor Adda on the same day. The United States has not confirmed any such strike. An investigation was under way to determine exactly what happened in the strike on the school, said Brigadier Saulat Raza, a Pakistani armed forces spokesman. U.S. officials were "working with the Pakistanis for an accurate battlefield damage assessment of the incident," a U.S. military statement said. Unmanned plane crashesIn a separate development, an unmanned U.S. surveillance plane crashed Wednesday in southern Pakistan, shortly after takeoff. There were no injuries or damage on the ground. Jacobabad police chief Rana Sateh Sher said the medium-sized drone crashed about seven kilometers (4.3 miles) from Jacobabad because of technical reasons. Flames were extinguished quickly and the wreckage was cleared by local police. CNN Islamabad Bureau Chief Ash-har Quraishi and Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report.
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