Day for answers for families of three servicemen killed by rogue Afghan soldier 26.07.11
9The inquest into the killing of three British troops, by an Afghan soldier, has heard there was low-level friction between the two armies. But the commanding officer of First Battalion the Royal Gurkha Rifles said it was not the kind of thing he thought would generate a rogue attack. Major James Joshua Bowman, Lieutenant Neal Turkington and Corporal Arjun Purja Pun, all of 1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles, were killed on a base in Helmand Province on July 12, last year. After the killings, a man called Talib Hussein contacted the BBC bureau in Kabul to claim responsibility saying he had been angered by British conduct. He insisted he had not spoken to the Taliban before the killings. Hussein, 23, shot Maj Bowman, 34, from Salisbury, Wiltshire, dead in his sleeping quarters in Patrol Base 3 in Nahr-e Saraj district, near Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah. He also fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the base's command centre, killing Lt Turkington, 26, from Craigavon, Northern Ireland, and Cpl Pun, 33, from Nepal and wounding four other UK soldiers. Maj Bowman was the most senior member of British forces to die in Afghanistan since Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, was killed by a roadside bomb. Hussein was in the army for about eight or nine months, spending most of his time in Helmand, and was thought to have a hashish habit, the Afghan authorities said. Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Strickland -- the CO of 1RGR told the coroner that embedded partnership was seen as central to progress... that they had to eat, live and fight with the Afghan national army to build trust. There had been a rogue attack in 2009 by an Afghan Policeman -- but Lt Colonel Strickland said the ANA were seen as less of a risk. As well as "low level friction" he said there had been two more significant incidents in the months before his soldiers were killed. One a row over bottled water, which had resulted in the Gurkha's hindu temple being vandalised, and then the accidental shooting of an Afghan soldier by a Gurkha. But he said there had been no sign of either generating the risk of a rogue attack. This inquest is scheduled to last until Friday at Wiltshire and Swindon Coroner's Court in Trowbridge. Among those due to give evidence, soldiers who were in patrol base three on the night of the attack, and the commander of task force Helmand at the time, Brigadier Richard Felton.