Comrades gathered Wednesday to say goodbye to a Canadian soldier who died in a mysterious shooting in his tent at the Kandahar air field in Afghanistan.
"He was generally, I think, one of the best people I've ever met. A little red-headed guy with the biggest heart," Master Cpl. Nathan Crosby of 1st Battalion, Nova Scotia Highlanders, said Wednesday of Cpl. Kevin Megeney.
The dead soldier's comrades stood 10-deep under the lights of the night-time ramp ceremony.
"Ask anybody who knows him and they'd all say the same thing: Everybody loves him," said Crosby, a pallbearer.
Cpl. Brent Bowden, another pallbearer and platoon mate, will be accompanying Megeney's body home.
"It was an honour to be a friend of his. It's an honour to know his family. And it's an honour to me as well to be going back with him," he said.
The Canadian military remains tight-lipped about the circumstances of the soldier's death pending an investigation.
Megeney, a 25-year-old reservist from Stellarton, N.S., died Tuesday in what is being called a non-combat shooting accident.
The member of the base security platoon died soon after in hospital. The military will only say it did not involve enemy action.
Maj. Dale MacEachern, spokesman for Task Force Afghanistan, would not say where the shooting occurred on the base, how it happened, if others were involved or how many people were being questioned.
"It could have been an accident. Before we can definitively say 100 per cent that it was, we have to let the investigation run its course, gather the facts and go from there,'' MacEachern said.
Most of the 10,000 soldiers at the Kandahar base are required to carry a firearm at all times. But they are supposed to keep their weapons unloaded, and keep a clip of ammunition close at hand.
"Nobody is authorized to actually load that weapon unless directed to do so by a superior in order to accomplish a specific mission," MacEachern said.
Megeney had volunteered to go to Afghanistan and had been there since Dec. 8. The infantryman was the 45th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan. Six of those deaths have been accidental or friendly-fire incidents.
Col. Mike Cessford, deputy commander of Task Force Afghanistan, said the Canadian military's National Investigation Service is probing the incident.
Operation Achilles
CTV's Tom Clark, on assignment in Afghanistan, said the tragedy served as a "punch in the stomach" to the Canadian military as troops took part in the first day of Operation Achilles, the alliance's largest-ever offensive in Afghanistan.
Achilles, a British-led operation supported by Canadian, U.S., Afghan and other coalition troops, continued on Wednesday. Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces arrested a suspected bomb expert and five other terror suspects in eastern Afghanistan, as NATO forces in the south battled with Taliban militants.
The U.S.-led coalition had information indicating "a suspected terrorist with strong ties to al Qaeda" and to a group that helped militants along Afghanistan's border region was inside an eastern Afghan compound near Jalalabad, it said.
"The suspected terrorist was a (bomb-making) expert and logistics officer for the Tora Bora Front, which facilitates the movement of fighters from Pakistan to Afghanistan," the U.S. said. No shots were fired and no one was hurt during the raid.
Meanwhile in Helmand province in Southern Afghanistan, roughly 5,500 NATO and Afghan soldiers fought Taliban militants. The region, a Taliban stronghold, is virtually ruled by a shadow-Taliban government and drug traffickers.
"We've established a presence and in some areas it's a heavy presence, and we're trying to disrupt the Taliban's senior leadership in the area and try to separate them from trying to rally" the Taliban's locally recruited soldiers, NATO spokesman Col. Tom Collins said.
However, a top Taliban commander in Helmand province is telling NATO to bring it on.
Speaking to The Associated Press in an interview by satellite phone, Mullah Abdul Qassim said the Taliban has up to 9,000 fighters available in Helmand.
They have laid landmines and have suicide bombers ready, with plans to target helicopters.
Last fall, the Taliban tried to fight a traditional battle with NATO forces in the Panjwaii district of Kandahar province -- and lost badly.
Qassim said they have learned from that.
"The Taliban know traditional fighting," he said. "If we need to fight in a group, we will. If we need a suicide attack, we will do that. If we need ambushes and guerrilla fighting, we will do that."
With a report from CTV's Tom Clark and files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press
