Afghani Trainee policeman kills six US troops in Afghanistan

by Yasar Hameed Yasar Hameed –

Tue Nov 30, 2010, 3:50 am ET

ASADABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) –

Six American soldiers training Afghan police in a Taliban flashpoint were shot dead by one of their students in the deadliest such incident in at least two years, officials said Tuesday.

The shooting, which follows a string of similar attacks on NATO troops, underscores the challenges faced by the US-led mission as it aims to build the national army and police to take responsibility for security by 2014.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the gunman, identified as a local resident who had been in training with Western troops for only a few days, was also killed, and an investigation was underway.

Wearing Afghan border police uniform, the man turned his weapon against ISAF troops during the training mission on Monday, killing the six soldiers in Taliban-infested eastern Afghanistan, NATO announced.

A US defence official identified the six troops as Americans but declined to give further details.

A Taliban spokesman praised the attack in comments emailed to the media, but the militant group did not claim credit for the killings.

President Hamid Karzai ordered security chiefs to investigate the incident with NATO, and the interior ministry later announced their own probe.

"The president offers his sympathy to the family of the victims and NATO troops based in Afghanistan," a statement from Karzai's office said.

Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province where the incident took place, named the gunman as Azat Gul, a policeman being schooled at the training centre in the Pachir Agam area of Khogyani district.

"After a few days of training, yesterday he opened fire and killed six American soldiers," Abdulzai told AFP.

Americans make up most of the foreign troops based in eastern Afghanistan, one of the worst flashpoints in the nine-year Taliban insurgency that erupted after the 2001 US-led invasion brought down their regime.

Monday's deaths bring the number of coalition troop fatalities this year to 668, according to an AFP tally based on that of the independent icasualties.org website.

It is the highest annual toll since the US-led invasion in late 2001. Last year 521 NATO soldiers died.

The United States is bankrolling a massive programme -- 9.2 billion dollars in fiscal 2010 -- to build Afghanistan's army and police so they can take over responsibility for security by 2014.

But the programme has been troubled by a series of shootings, either by insurgents dressed in Afghan security uniforms or by rogue officers.

An ISAF spokesman said Monday's incident was the deadliest of its type since their database was started more than two years ago.

This month NATO said it was investigating whether an Afghan soldier killed two coalition troops on a military base in the volatile town of Sangin in southern Helmand province.

In July, an Afghan soldier killed two American contractors inside a military base in north Afghanistan. A week later another Afghan soldier killed three British Gurkha soldiers.

In 2009, five British soldiers were killed by an Afghan policeman.

Leading think tank the International Crisis Group has issued a damning review of the war, saying Afghan security forces "have proven a poor match for the Taliban" and were "corrupt, brutal and predatory".

Afghanistan now has about 80,000 police officers, and US and NATO forces say they hope to increase this number to 134,000 by October 2011, at the same time as boosting the Afghan army to a 170,000-strong force.

9 Afghan guards kidnapped in Kabul province

By Rahim Faiez And Heidi Vogt, Associated Press –

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan –

Afghan (Taliban) gunmen attacked a construction company in Kabul province, wounding one security guard and kidnapping nine others, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday.

Taliban gunmen opened fire on 18 Afghan guards in the mountainous Sarobi district, about 27 miles (45 kilometers) east of the capital, Kabul on Monday.

Nine guards were kidnapped and nine escaped, said Zemeri Bashary, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry. The gunmen also seized several rifles.

The attack came the same day an Afghan border policeman killed six American service members during a training mission, underscoring one of the risks in a U.S.-led program to educate enough recruits to turn over the lead for security to Afghan forces by 2014.

The attacker was killed in the shootout, which appeared to be the deadliest attack of its kind in at least two years.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for killing the six U.S. troops in Nangarhar province near the Pakistan border, saying the officer had enlisted as a sleeper agent in order to have an opportunity to kill foreigners.

Attacks on NATO troops by Afghan policemen or soldiers, although still rare, have increased as the coalition has accelerated the program. Other problems with the rapidly growing security forces include drug use, widespread illiteracy and high rates of attrition.

NATO is still investigating an incident earlier this month in which two U.S. Marines were killed in southern Helmand province, allegedly at the hands of an Afghan soldier.

After two deadly shootings in July, NATO officers said they were re-examining training practices to make sure that such attacks did not happen again.

On July 20, an Afghan army sergeant got into an argument at a shooting range in northern Afghanistan and shot dead two American civilian trainers before being killed. Another Afghan soldier was killed in the crossfire.

A week earlier, an Afghan soldier stationed in the south killed three British troopers, including the company commander, with gunfire and a rocket-propelled grenade in the middle of the night.

In November 2009, an Afghan policeman killed five British soldiers at a checkpoint in Helmand.

On Sept. 29, 2008, an Afghan police officer opened fire at a police station in eastern Paktia province, killing a U.S. soldier and wounding three before he was fatally shot. A NATO official expressed shock at the time that an Afghan officer would betray his NATO partners.

Col. John "Pete" Johnson, a U.S. forces commander in eastern Afghanistan, said afterwards that the Sept. 2008 attack was "way out of the norm" and "the first incident of its kind."

On Tuesday, a NATO service member was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, the military coalition said. The victim was not immediately identified. Also Tuesday, a traffic accident in Zabul province killed six passengers and injured 49, the Interior Ministry said.