KANDAHAR - Three foreign soldiers, two of them British, were killed by Afghan security personnel Monday in two separate shootings, officials said, bringing the number of such deaths to 16 this year. An Afghan soldier said to be an officer shot dead the Britons in the southern province of Helmand, while the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force said an “alleged member” of the police killed a trooper in eastern Afghanistan.
“It appears that a member of the Afghan national army opened fire at the entrance gate to the British headquarters in Lashkar Gah city, killing the two British service personnel,” said Britain’s Defence Secretary Philip Hammond. The attacker was shot dead by coalition forces and officials said another British soldier was severely wounded. Provincial police chief Abdul Nabi Elham said the gunman was a lieutenant named Gul Nazar from Jalalabad. “As soon as the Nato soldiers opened the game for him and his team in their centre, this soldier opened fire at them and killed them,” he said. “We don’t know the motive behind this attack and have not found a link to the Taliban.
We are still investigating.”
A spokesman for the militants contacted by AFP described the gunman as being “in contact” with them, although he did not claim the attack as being mounted by the Taliban.
Elsewhere in southern Afghanistan, police said a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a US-run base in Chora district in Uruzgan province, wounding three foreign troops and an Afghan policeman.
Isaf said in a statement that in the second incident its service member was “shot by an alleged member of the Afghan local police as the security force approached an ALP checkpoint”.
It did not state the victim’s nationality, in line with policy.
A spokesman said the incident happened in Paktika province and the fate of the gunman was unclear. Initial reports indicated two “alleged shooters” were involved, he added.
ISAF statements released in Kabul said Afghan and Nato investigations had been opened into the latest killings.
The previous victims of green-on-blue attacks were six Americans, four French army trainers, an Albanian and two Isaf personnel whose nationality has not been disclosed.
But a classified coalition report leaked to The New York Times earlier this year described green-on-blue shootings as a “systemic” problem.
The report put the killings down to a decade of deep-seated animosity on each side, and profound ill-will among both civilians and soldiers on both sides, downplaying the role of possible Taliban infiltrators in such incidents.