US soldier 'killed by boy of 14'

The body of the first US soldier to be killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan will arrive home today amid reports that he was shot dead by a 14-year-old.

Green Beret Sergeant Nathan Chapman was killed in an ambush near the border with Pakistan on Friday in an exchange that also seriously injured a CIA agent. But the details of the firefight remain unclear, with tribal chiefs saying that the 31-year-old communications specialist, who was married with two children, had been gunned down by a lone teenage boy.

Like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the boy now seems to have vanished. Tribal chiefs had planned to hold a council to decide whether to turn the boy over to the US, but now say they cannot find him. Sgt Chapman's remains will arrive in his home town of Seattle today.

? An al Qaeda fighter killed himself with a grenade today rather than be captured when he failed in an attempt to escape from the Kandahar hospital where he had been holed up for more than a month with several heavily armed comrades.