KABUL: Four soldiers fighting with the NATO-led alliance were killed in another suspected “insider” attack in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, the coalition said, bringing the total number of deaths this weekend caused by Afghans turning on their allies to six.
Four NATO-led troops were found dead and two wounded when a response team arrived at the scene from a nearby checkpoint, a spokesman for the coalition said.One of the six members of the Afghan National Police (ANP) operating the observation post with six coalition troops was also found dead, while the other five had disappeared. “The fighting had stopped by the time the responders arrived,” said Major Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the NATO-led coalition.
Sunday’s shooting took place in Zabol, a province where US forces are based, according to a local official, who said the four soldiers killed were American.The attack came a day after two British soldiers were shot dead by an Afghan policeman while returning from a patrol in southern Helmand province, one of the strongholds of the Taliban-led insurgency.The NATO-led coalition and its Afghan counterparts have created a special Joint Casualties Assessment Team to investigate every attack.
Adding to the toll of coalition deaths caused by insider attacks over the weekend, two were killed and nine wounded in Friday’s attack on Camp Bastion, one of the worst attacks on a NATO-operated base all year.Six Harrier jets were destroyed and two were significantly damaged in the raid on the camp airfield, carried out by 15 insurgents wearing US Army uniforms, the NATO-led coalition said in a separate statement on Sunday.Operating in three teams, they succeeded in breaching the perimeter of the heavily fortified base. Britain’s Prince Harry was at Camp Bastion at the time of Friday’s attack, but was unharmed.
Three refuelling stations were also destroyed and six aircraft hangars were damaged. All but one of the attackers were killed, with the remaining fighter taken into custody by coalition forces.In a separate incident on Sunday, NATO-led forces arrested a Taliban fighter responsible for killing two US troops when they were downed in their Kiowa helicopter in eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said in another statement.
Relations between the NATO-led coalition and its Afghan partners have also been strained by civilian casualties.Despite efforts to limit such deaths, over 200 civilians have been killed by foreign troops this year so far, according to figures provided by the coalition, around 50 percent fewer than a year ago.
NATO-led air strikes in southern Laghman province on Saturday night killed eight women, according to a local official. The coalition acknowledged up to eight civilians could have died as a result of the bombing, but said a “large number” of insurgents had been killed in the strike. Villagers said the death toll was higher and expressed outrage at being unable to pick up the bodies because the area had been closed off. – Dailytimes
