Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Several NATO and Afghan
service members, including two Americans, were killed Monday when an
assailant wearing an Afghan National Security Forces uniform opened fire
on the group, NATO's International Security Assistance Force officials
said.
The shootout in eastern
Afghanistan didn't last long as coalition forces "returned fire and
killed the attacker," a U.S. official told CNN.
Two Afghan army personnel
also were killed, said Gen. Zahir Azimi, an Afghan Defense Ministry
spokesman. A U.S. military official told CNN that at least 10 Americans
were wounded as well.
The assailant fired at
the victims with a truck-mounted machine gun, Azimi said, after a
meeting between coalition and Afghan forces at a military base in the
Jalrez district of Wardak province, about an hour west of Kabul.
A spokesman for the Taliban, the militant group that once ruled Afghanistan, said the shooter was an Afghan police officer, but it's unclear if that was the case.
A U.S. official said a
variety of Afghan security forces -- including army, national police and
perhaps local police -- were at a training-related meeting.
The incident appeared to
be the latest "green-on-blue" attack, or strike against coalition
members by people dressed in police or army uniforms. Assailants
conducting similar subterfuge killed dozens of coalition troops in 2012.
On Friday, a coalition
contractor in eastern Afghanistan was killed when people wearing Afghan
uniforms turned their weapons against ISAF members, NATO said.
The last coalition
soldier killed in a "green-on-blue" attack was a Briton, who was slain
on January 7. And in the last similar fatal assault on U.S. troops, two
Americans were killed October 25.
The coalition has been working to thwart such insider attacks.
Coalition soldiers are
required to have a loaded weapon within reach at all times. In addition,
the coalition ended training for hundreds of Afghan soldiers last year
until the completion of background checks for insurgent links.
Most of the insider
attacks are believed to be the result of Afghan soldiers suffering from
combat or emotional stress, a Defense Department official told CNN in
September after an especially deadly weekend for coalition troops.
Only about 15% of the
"green-on-blue" attacks are believed to be the result of insurgent
links, and about 10% come from infiltrators not affiliated with the
military, the Defense Department official said.
The latest attack comes a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai outraged the ISAF commander by
contending there are "ongoing daily talks between Taliban, American and
foreigners in Europe and in the Gulf states" and "that Taliban want
longer presence of foreigners -- not their departure from Afghanistan."
U.S. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, who oversees the NATO-led force, said that's "categorically false."
"We have fought too hard
over the past 12 years. We have shed too much blood over the past 12
years. We have done too much to help the Afghan Security Forces grow
over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would
be to our advantage," Dunford said.
Newly installed U.S.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited Afghanistan this weekend on his
first overseas trip since his confirmation. Hagel told reporters he
tried to reassure Karzai that the United States had no unilateral
back-channel talks with the Taliban.
