One Slovak soldier was killed and another six injured when an Afghan soldier opened fire on NATO troops from a guard tower at the Kandahar Airport in Afghanistan. The 35-year old sergeant Daniel Kavuliak suffered fatal bullet wounds to the chest and head. He became the first Slovak to be killed in Afghanistan since 2002 when the Slovak Army joined the international forces operating there. Retired Colonel Miroslav Minar, a journalist with Slovak radio, has a few reporting trips to Afghanistan under his belt, and offered insight into the tragedy.
Kandahar is the place where the highest numbers of international troops are located. Our Slovak soldiers are in charge with guarding and controlling one access point to the base which is crossed daily by hundreds of trucks and military vehicles plus the Afghans working inside the base. You can imagine that our soldiers face some considerable risks but they have been trained for such a mission.
Concluded Colonel Minar. General Abdul Raziq Sherzai, the brigade commander of the Afghan Air Force in Kandahar stated shortly after the event that the offending soldier has been arrested and placed under interrogation. The wounded Slovak soldiers’ conditions are not listed as critical although two of them do have serious injuries. “If the perpetrator of this shameful act thought it would intimidate us to withdraw from Afghanistan, then I suggest to him the opposite,” said Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák at a press conference on Tuesday. According to Lajčák, terrorists are cowards, adding that Slovakia is part of the fight against terrorism and Slovak soldiers will remain in Afghanistan after 2014. “Our goal is not to allow a recurrence of such shameful attacks in the future,” he said.
