Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan — Armed with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and an automatic rifle, a rogue Afghan soldier attacked a group of British troops early Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, killing three of the soldiers and wounding four others before escaping.
The Afghan soldier was assigned to a patrol base shared by NATO troops and the Afghan National Army in the volatile southern province of Helmand, according to NATO spokespeople and Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry.
Helmand is where American troops mounted a large-scale offensive earlier this year to uproot Taliban insurgents from a stronghold in the town of Marja.
The motive for the attack in the Nahr-e-Sarraj district remained unclear, but it could prove deeply embarrassing for the Afghan government and U.S. military leaders, who have stressed the importance of ratcheting up the training of Afghan security forces so that they can gradually take on more responsibility for securing their own country.
The Associated Press reported that Afghan President Hamid Karzai sent a letter of apology to the British government. Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omar, said Karzai “was upset to hear this. … It’s a very regrettable case, and we hope that this is thoroughly investigated.”
In Britain, Defense Minister Liam Fox called the attack “a despicable and cowardly act.” But he said training Afghan security forces would continue because it is “vital to the international security mission in Afghanistan, and today’s events will not undermine the real progress we continue to make.”
NATO and the Afghan Defense Ministry have begun a joint investigation. In a statement released by NATO, U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, said Afghan and NATO security forces “must ensure that the trust between our forces remains solid in order to defeat our common enemies.”
With Tuesday’s incident, 317 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001, according to icasualties.org, a website that keeps track of war-related deaths in the Afghan conflict.
Attacks by renegade Afghan soldiers or police on NATO troops are rare but have occurred in the past. Tuesday’s attack is likely to renew concerns about the infiltration of Taliban militants or sympathizers into Afghan security forces. Last November, an Afghan police officer killed five British soldiers at a training base in Helmand province. A month later in the northwest province of Badghis, an Afghan soldier shot and killed an American soldier and injured two Italian troops.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, border police seized more than 50 tons of ammonium nitrate, the main component in Taliban-made roadside bombs that have become the leading killer of U.S. and Western troops in the country.
The seizure from a 12-truck convoy took place Monday at a checkpoint in Paktia province, a rugged, mountainous region along Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan, according to NATO. Ten of the convoy’s trucks carried legal fertilizer, but two contained ammonium nitrate, which is banned in Afghanistan. Later, another truck carrying ammonium nitrate was stopped. Together, the three trucks were transporting 900 bags of ammonium nitrate, an amount that NATO said could have been used to make more than 2,100 roadside bombs.
A recent report by the Afghan Defense Ministry stated that ammonium nitrate is the key ingredient in 80% of the roadside bombs used by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Most of the ammonium nitrate used by Afghan Taliban insurgents is produced or imported by Pakistan and smuggled into Afghanistan. Rampant corruption among Pakistani border guards, police and local government officials allows trucks carrying ammonium nitrate to freely cross into Afghanistan.
U.S. and Western forces have suffered 772 combat-related deaths since the beginning of 2009, and 460, or nearly three of every five, have resulted from roadside bombs, according to icasualties.org.
