A British soldier died in Afghanistan yesterday after an Army dump truck was hit by an explosion in Helmand province, the Ministry of Defence has announced.

Another soldier, also from 36 Engineer Regiment, was injured in the incident, which happened as a routine logistics convoy was moving 12 miles (19km) northeast of the town of Gereshk.

The two casualties were airlifted to the Isaf medical facility at Camp Bastion, where the first soldier was pronounced dead on arrival. The second soldier's injuries are not said to be life-threatening. Next of kin have been informed.

As Derek Twigg, the junior defence minister, expressed his "deep sadness" at the latest killing, an inquest in Oxfordshire into an earlier British military death in Afghanistan had to be halted today, after new evidence emerged that the teenage soldier had probably been the victim of friendly fire.

Private Andrew Cutts, 19, of 13 Air Assault Support Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps, was shot dead as he left the town of Musa Qal'eh, Helmand province, after delivering supplies to Danish troops there on August 6 last year.

Colleagues said that he was struck from behind as he faced an area where Taleban forces were suspected to be. The shots seemed to come from an area patrolled by the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment.

Captain Tariq Ahmad, a doctor who examined Pte Cutts shortly afterwards and certified him dead, had mistaken a bullet hole over the soldier's eye for an entry wound, when in fact it was an exit wound, the inquest heard.

Halting the inquest, Andrew Walker, the assistant deputy coroner for Oxfordshire, said: "It is only now that we have heard that the shots that sadly Private Andrew Cutts came from an area opposite to where he was facing.

"It seems that the Royal Military Police must collect further statements about this."

Sergeant Steve Beech, of the RMP, said: "In view of our not being able to say with certainty what direction the rounds came from, we need to speak to the men from 3 Para."

In Afghanistan, police claimed that security forces had killed Mullah Abdullah Jan, a Taleban commander said to be behind the kidnapping last month of 23 South Korean missionaries. News of Jan's death in a US air raid could not immediately be verified, however.

Two of the Christian missionaries were shot dead by their captors before a deal was at length negotiated to secure the release of the rest.

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