Two US soldiers shot dead at Afghan prison

KABUL, May 7 (Reuters) A rogue Afghan army soldier shot dead two US soldiers at the high-security Pul-i-Charkhi prison on the eastern outskirts of Kabul, the US military said.

The soldier shot at vehicles leaving the Afghan prison yesterday, and was then shot by other Afghan soldiers at the jail, US coalition forces said in a statement. Two American soldiers were wounded in the incident.

''All indications were that he was an Afghan national army soldier,'' US military spokesman Major Sheldon Smith said.

The dead soldiers were military trainers working with Afghans at the prison, which is being upgraded by US forces to house suspected Taliban prisoners being returned from US custody in Afghanistan and Guantanamo in Cuba.

''We're helping build the facility and we're helping to train the guard force,'' Smith said.

The first 12 US-held Taliban were returned to Afghan authorities last month, to be held in a newly refurbished wing.

Pul-i-Charkhi has been notorious since the 1970s when a hardline communist regime threw large numbers of military rivals, clergy and other political prisoners into the jail, with executions held daily.

Since 2001, Taliban prisoners captured by Afghan forces have staged at least two revolts at the prison and several have escaped.

The prison also holds Jonathan ''Jack'' Idema, an American jailed in 2004 for running a private jail and illegally detaining and torturing people in a freelance hunt for Osama bin Laden. Two others convicted in that case have been released.

REUTERS SBC ND1002