| Afghan worker kills 3 US troops at military base |
KABUL Three US Marines have been shot dead by an Afghan worker on a military base in southern Afghanistan, in a deadly 24 hours for Nato-led forces during which six American soldiers were killed in rogue attacks.
The shooting took place on Friday night in the Garmsir district of Helmand province, where three US special forces soldiers were killed by an Afghan policeman and comrades earlier in the day.
“Let me clearly say that those two incidents clearly do not reflect the overall situation here in Afghanistan,” the chief Nato force spokesman, Brigadier-General Gunter Katz, said on Saturday.
The three Marines were shot by a base employee who turned a gun on them, in the third rogue attack in four days. Foreign military sources said the man had not been wearing a uniform and it was unclear how he got hold of the weapon.
The gunman had been detained and a joint Afghan-Nato investigation team was reviewing security and looking into the reason for the attack.
In another incident, 11 Afghan policemen were killed in Delaram district of western Nimroz province on Saturday. “One of their colleagues, believed to be a Taliban infiltrator, opened fire on them,” officials said.
“Unfortunately 11 of our brave national police were killed in this cowardly attack,” Nimroz governor Abdul Karim Brahawi said.
“Initial investigation shows the shooter was a Taliban infiltrator. He was also killed when police returned fire,” Brahawi said.
Provincial deputy police chief Abdul Majid Latifi confirmed that 11 police had been killed by “a man in police uniform”, adding that an investigation into the attack was under way.
In the earlier attack, an Afghan police commander and several of his men killed three US Marines in darkness early on Friday after inviting them to a Holy Month of Ramadan breakfast to discuss security. The three men were all Marine Corps special operations forces and appeared to have been killed in a planned attack by rogue Afghan forces. Nato calls such incidents green on blue attacks.
The Nato force says there have been 26 such attacks on foreign troops since January in which 34 people have been killed. Last year, there were 21 attacks in which 35 people were killed.
But a coalition spokesman said the killings by the Afghan worker would not be included in that tally as it did not involve a member of the Afghan security forces.
Katz said the incidents were relatively isolated and were not hurting cooperation between foreign forces and the 350,000-strong Afghan Security Forces.
“We have almost 500,000 police and soldiers working together, side by side, enhancing their trust and enhancing their cooperation in order together to fight for a better future for this country,” he said.
A Taliban statement posted on Twitter said the attacks were “clearly summing up mood of Afghan nation towards foreign occupation”.
Agencies
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