Afghanistan Attack: 2 Nato Service Members Shot Dead By Men In Afghan Police Uniforms

KABUL, Afghanistan — Men wearing Afghan police uniforms shot dead two NATO service members Saturday in southern Afghanistan, authorities said, the latest in a string of attacks on international troops by Afghan security forces or militants disguised as police.

Two other coalition service members also died Saturday in Afghanistan, one in an insurgent attack and another of non-battle related injuries.

There were conflicting reports about the shooting in Helmand province.

Fareed Ahmad, a spokesman for the Helmand provincial police, said two Afghan policemen opened fire on coalition troops at 3 p.m. at a joint Afghan-coalition compound, killing two coalition troops. He said a third Afghan policemen fired at the attackers, killing one and wounding the other, who escaped.

The attackers had been members of the Afghan National Police for one year and were from Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, according to Ahmad

NATO said it was aware of the Afghan statements, but that operational reports indicated that the assailants were insurgents dressed in police uniforms, not official members of the police force. The coalition also said that one attacker was killed and the second was being pursued.

One official of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force familiar with early reports on the incident said the two coalition troops killed in the attack were British soldiers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is still under investigation.

A man wearing an Afghan army uniform shot dead a U.S. soldier Friday in eastern Afghanistan. That shooting was the 15th incident this year in which Afghan soldiers or insurgents disguised in military uniforms have turned their weapons on foreign troops, according to NATO.

Also Saturday, a roadside bomb killed a third NATO service member, while a fourth died of non-battle related injuries. All four deaths occurred in the south, where much of the fighting in the more than 10-year conflict has been concentrated, the alliance said in a statement.

So far this month, 18 NATO service members have been killed in Afghanistan.

Separately, four Afghan police officers were killed in the northwestern province of Badghis when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Qadis district, said the provincial governor's spokesman, Sharafudin Majedi.

Related on HuffPost:

Comments

[sophie M]

05:48 PM on 05/13/2012

weeping mothers today....
i weep for them also.
and a nation that is sick and tired of this phantom war.
Damn.........not fair..

[jason thomson]

05:31 PM on 05/13/2012

The Taliban are fighting to free Afghanistan of the illegal occupation of their country & a pro American puppet government that they feel is corrupt & unjust.
This is why both the Afghan soldiers & civilians have more faith in the Taliban than the Karzai-US 'alliance' & is why many Afghan soldiers are attacking American or 'NATO' soldiers, you do not have their 'hearts & minds, just a corrupt legal agreement that the Afghan government & the American government have agreed to that the Afghan people do NOT believe in, & killing the odd Taliban fighter among all the civilians is only going to make it worse.

Pulling out of the war would be the best thing anyone could do for Afghanistan & American soldiers, but is not in the best interests for American corporations who continue to reap enormous profits for as long as the war is prolonged.
The corporate-bought, American government, does not want to pull out until it has a pro-American puppet government in control of Afghanistan that can stay in power & give America its ultimate goal of the Afghan war: The untapped iron, copper, cobalt, gold & lithium quantities which have been discovered in Afghanistan & is understood to be the largest untapped mineral reserve in the world.

[ords44]

10:59 AM on 05/13/2012

That was an excellent piece of reporting, about a sad but true situation - it's past time for us to be gone from Afghanistan.

[SESZOO]

07:54 AM on 05/13/2012

Are we going to get an apology from karzai or are we going to give him more money and arms for this killing , Bring our people out of there that one soldier isn't worth that whole country especially when their just doing their job.

[jason thomson]

05:34 PM on 05/13/2012

The S.S. were "just doing their jobs." So was the Gestapo.

[AlfredE69]

07:22 AM on 05/13/2012

President Obama: your war in Afghanistan is a failure. Bring our troops home now and no more money for King Karzai, he's looted enough.

[Dongflopper]

09:07 AM on 05/13/2012

Who's war. If I'm wrong another President started this war. The next president followed his predecessor by listening to the General's on the ground about needing more troops. While struggling with this decision, leaders of the Republican party were screaming we can't pull out until we have won, or he's weak on defense. So instead of doing the correct thing and packing up, we decided to win an un-winable war, and leave in a leader as bad as Kadafi was when we decided on him.

[AlfredE69]

11:11 AM on 05/13/2012

If I'm right, which I am, Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan.

[jbmorgen1]

03:53 AM on 05/13/2012

We're in a rut of war where our political leaders cannot break off the engagement in Afghanistan in fear of making a mistake in allowing the Taliban;plus, Al Qaeda, from returning. We're in a protracted war for a very long time, regardless what President Obama might have agreed to with the Afghan government....The fear of leaving is going to be our problem for disengagement in Central Asia.....

[jbmorgen1]

03:16 AM on 05/13/2012

We're fighting a never ending war, and against an enemy that looks like our allies.

[vascopyjama]

11:49 PM on 05/12/2012

Now I could be wrong but it seems to me that they don't like us giving them a puppet President and occupying their country.

[jbmorgen1]

03:56 AM on 05/13/2012

The Afghans have a dislike of outsiders in controlling their nation-state, regardless, if they like or dislike their government.

[ewalter899]

11:45 PM on 05/12/2012

And they wonder why an American soldier went berserk.

[Yasser Yousufi]

03:23 AM on 05/13/2012

The Afghans have a better reason to kill Americans! They have been occupying their country for 10 years and it doesn't look like they're in a hurry to leave. Hopefully these body bags (Not Afghan Deaths) will FORCE the American people to have a change of heart~!

[ewalter899]

01:38 PM on 05/13/2012

Foreign Muslim radicals have been occupying their country too. You seem to forget or ignore that fact.

[ewalter899]

12:53 AM on 05/17/2012

We aren't in any hurry to leave because these stoneage people can't run their own country,  and we suffer for it (9/11).

[Cheryl Casale]

10:53 PM on 05/12/2012

i told you ,you cant trust these people . were over there giving them arms and training them how stupid is the us , so they can kill us with our own wepons , there radicals and are born to hate us they brain wash there children to hate the us , borrom line is we need to get them guys home and let them kill each other and worrie about our own country.

[khanti]

11:46 PM on 05/12/2012

Have been stupid for decades. Al Qaeda was not set up by Osama. It was a 'base' fund and supported by the US to train mujaheedin (muslim freedom fighters).

[jason thomson]

05:43 PM on 05/13/2012

Correct. Al-Qaeda is more of a concept than an organization.
Al-Qaeda is a bogus enemy & any informed intelligence officer knows this. There is however a propaganda campaign to make the public believe they are fighting an identified entity & 'justify' anti-terror laws & funding for the 'war on terror', which should really be called a war OF terror.
Al-Qaeda is also the name of a computer database.

[Chopin]

09:21 PM on 05/12/2012

What's happening in Afghanistan isn't "war" by any conventional military definition:--

1)There're no territories to capture.
2)There're no armies on both sides.
3)There're no military objectives.
(Nightly raids into civilian homes to seize or ki// any young male who wields a gun, plants an IED, or shakes fist at occupation troops isn't military objective. It's technique of political terr'ism, or counter-terr'ism)
4)There's no discipline.
(Multiple repeated reported ki//ing of civilians, desecration of dead bodies, ... )
5)There's no accountability.
(Indiscriminate drone ki//ing of civilians are war crimes, internationally recognized in Geneva Conventions, and since Nuremberg trials)
6)There're no clear, understandable or debatable "metrics of success" (Patraeus' initiated approach of payingoff insurgent factions to not attack is "Potemkin Village" publicity-avoidance approach to mask failure, and isn't legitimate measure of success, nor "body counts" of dead Afghans stuck with "terr'ist" labels.)

Americans ki//ing + dying in this planned 20years American occupation of Afghanistan are complicit perpetrators aswellas victims of horrific cynical corporate-political fraud of massive dimensions. "Nation building"? Take closer look at what's perpetrated undercover. Rachel Maddow exposes Washington financed political cronyism in Afghanistan:--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5BHnN__5M

Sadaam was convenient patsy pretext for conquest of Iraq, as OBinLaden was convenient patsy pretext for conquest of Afghanistan. Real reasons + motivations for these American imperial conquests can be gleaned from careful review of this 90minutes video:
"New American Century":--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TZ3xRKSnP4
.

[Genosse Joe]

08:42 PM on 05/12/2012

Shh! Our Fearless Leader is busy arranging US capitulation to those folks.

[Boduognat]

06:56 PM on 05/12/2012

almost there.... just a few more surges...

[Dewts]

06:17 PM on 05/12/2012

there is not a single reason for us to be there. there was not a single reason for obama to escalate that war when he took office. why are we there? why are our troops allowed to die? why are we killing afghan civilians? why are we spending this money?

[jason thomson]

05:49 PM on 05/13/2012

Because Afghanistan is believed to be the largest untapped mineral reserve in the world, with huge quantities of iron, copper, cobalt, gold & lithium which corporate America wants to get its greedy paws on.

[Dewts]

06:14 PM on 05/13/2012

well, there is that. 

[the grange gorman]

06:11 PM on 05/12/2012

Empires die in Afghanistan

Overeach , arrogance , entry into afghanistan


UK empire failed.

Soviet empire failed.

The US empire will fail...........

[Leon Engelun]

07:33 PM on 05/12/2012

you forgot, Pakistan empire will win and merge with Afghanistan.

[Richie2012]

12:10 PM on 05/15/2012

That might be true but maybe it is better to leave Hell to those who deserve to live there. They will, as they did before, eat themselves. My only remorse is for the decent ordinary people who will have to suffer at the hands of the those who choose to rule by fear and intimidation.

[Chopin]

03:23 AM on 05/13/2012

The US is failing now in Afghanistan. But the failure is still largely disguised, masked over, fudged, and hidden from open view.

The US national debt today is over $15 Trillion. When Pakistan government shut off the US logistics supply route into Afghanistan via Pakistan border region's Khyber Pass (as protest over CIA operated drones ki//ing large number of Pakistani soldiers + officers.) So overland logistics supply of gasoline to US troops in Afghanistan through central Asian overland routes adds skyrocketing costs of gasoline reportedly up to $500perGallon. This is just one incident symptomatic of the breakdown of the war logistics and rationalization for the occupation, and the inherent insanity of the neocon goal of conquest.

Ultimately, America's endless war and occupation of Afghanistan will exacerbate the national debt, to the point of financial collapse and defacto national bankruptcy. This will be masked by the explosive unconstrained accelerated printing of USDollars (in trillions) in coming years to inflate the currency (and consequently devalue the nominal debt). Past some imperceptible "tipping point" of no-return, this of course will inevitably trigger uncontrollable hyperinflation, and hence defacto bankruptcy.