Ahmed "Sorkai" Zia, 12, was transferred to a Canadian ambulance at the entrance to Canada's main base in Afghanistan on Tuesday afternoon, assisted by Canadian, American and British medics. The boy was conscious, his head swaddled in bandages, but his condition was described as "serious," according to an Afghan interpreter who accompanied him and his uncle to the military hospital.

"Whenever they think they want to shoot someone they can. Nobody can ask anything about it," the boys' uncle, Haji Muhammad Eisah, told CanWest News Service. "That's why they shoot us like goats, like birds, like animals ...