Afghan aide tried to mow down British general in 4x4 Published on Saturday 17 March 2012 00:28 AN AFGHAN interpreter employed by the British army attempted to kill two of Nato's highest-ranking officers in the country shortly before a visit to Camp Bastion by US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, it has emerged. Nato initially downplayed reports of the incident on Wednesday at the UK's main military base in the country, saying only that a stolen pick-up truck careered across the runaway at the facility, before crashing, with the driver later dying of burns. However, US officials yesterday confirmed that the vehicle was driven at a party awaiting the arrival of Panetta - a group that included Major General Mark Gurganus of the US Marines, the top commander in Helmand province, and his British deputy, Brigadier General Stuart Skeats. Panetta's trip occurred only three days after an American soldier went on a shooting spree and killed 16 civilians in two villages in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar. The officials said that the Afghan driver, a civilian, worked under contract as an interpreter at Camp Bastion, but could not say whether he was aware of the rank of the men at whom he drove the Toyota Hilux. The attack occurred only five minutes before the arrival of Panetta, a fact which almost certainly would not have been known to the Afghan. Meanwhile, Afghan president Hamid Karzai yesterday warned he was at "the end of the rope" over civilian casualties, and accused the US of not sharing information about how an American soldier allegedly shot and killed the 16 Afghans in Kandahar. In an emotional meeting with relatives of the shooting victims at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr Karzai said the villagers" accounts of the massacre were widely different from the scenario depicted by US military officials. The relatives and villagers insisted that it was impossible for one gunmen to kill nine children, four men and three women in three houses of two villages near a US combat outpost. Mr Karzai pointed to one of the villagers from Panjwai district of Kandahar province and said: "In his family, in four rooms people were killed - children and women were killed - and then they were all brought together in one room and then set on fire. That, one man cannot do. This has been going on for too long. You have heard me before. It is by all means the end of the rope here... This form of activity, this behaviour cannot be tolerated. It is past, past, past the time. The American military yesterday moved the Staff Sergeant involved in the incident back to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. The unidentified 38-year-old soldier's attorney, John Henry Browne, has said that the day before the rampage, the soldier saw his friend's leg blown off.