KABUL - Afghans killed two American soldiers and wounded at least two others before dawn Thursday at a joint base in Kandahar province, in the latest deadly shooting of international forces by their Afghan partners, U.S. officials said.
The Pentagon said two Afghan soldiers and a civilian accomplice - a literacy teacher - fired on the American service members from a guard tower at the Sang-e-Sar outpost in southern Afghanistan. U.S. troops then killed one of the Afghan soldiers and the teacher, but it was unclear whether the third attacker, who survived, was wounded or detained, Pentagon spokesman George Little said.
A local police commander offered a different version of events, saying an Afghan soldier and a civilian teacher first killed a fellow Afghan soldier at the outpost before turning that soldier's weapon on the Americans.
Masoom Khan, the police chief of Zhari district, where the shooting took place, said the attackers fled and ran for about three miles "but the Americans sent a helicopter after them and shot them to death." That account couldn't be confirmed immediately.
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The attack was the latest in a series of so-called "green-on-blue" shootings, in which members of the Afghan security forces have turned their guns on their Western counterparts. It follows the murders of two high-ranking U.S. officers last Saturday at an Afghan Interior Ministry compound in Kabul. Two other U.S. soldiers were killed Feb. 23 at a joint U.S.-Afghan base in eastern Nangarhar province by a man wearing an Afghan army uniform.
Despite the rising number of attacks on U.S. troops by Afghans, the Pentagon said it wasn't considering a major change in its Afghanistan strategy, which hinges on coalition forces training 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers and handing over security responsibilities to them by the end of 2014.
"We are staying the course in the Afghanistan," Little said, adding that he "strongly rejected" suggestions that the strategy is not working.
Since U.S. service members burned copies of the Quran nearly two weeks ago at a U.S. base outside Kabul, sparking widespread anti-American anger, Afghan security forces have killed six American troops. During the same period, no U.S. service member was killed by a Taliban attack or roadside bomb, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks troop deaths.
US Toll in Afghanistan
1,783
Deaths
15,415
Wounded
Source: Department of Defense.
