American killed in Afghan military base attack
KABUL, Afghanistan -- One American service member and eight Afghan contractors were killed in an attack on a military base in the Afghan capital, officials said Saturday.
A U.S. military official confirmed to CBS News that an American service member was among the victims. No additional information on the American was provided.
A number of other NATO service members and foreign contracted civilians were wounded in the Friday night attack, NATO spokesman Col. Brian Tribus said. The Afghans killed were working for NATO's Resolute Support mission on Camp Integrity in Kabul.
The attack on Camp Integrity late Friday and two massive bombings in the city earlier in the day call into question Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's ability to tamp down the violent insurgency that is roiling the country despite his administration's focus on making peace with the Taliban.
Confirmation of the contractors' deaths increased the toll from one of Kabul's worst days of violence to at least 44. Hundreds were wounded in the three attacks.
The Taliban issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack on the base. It said four attackers were involved, with one blowing up a car at the entrance to enable the other three to enter the base.
The Interior Ministry said 10 security guards were injured and three insurgents killed by Afghan security forces as they tried to enter the base.
The attack on the camp followed within hours of a suicide attack on a police academy in Kabul that killed 20 people and wounded at least 24.
The Taliban said they were also behind the academy attack in which a person dressed in police uniform mingled with cadets returning from their weekend break.
As they were lined up to re-enter the academy, the attacker detonated an explosives-packed vest, a security official said, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Earlier Friday, a truck bomb in a residential area of Kabul killed 15 people and wounded more than 200, in one of the most devastating attacks on the capital since the insurgency began in 2001. The blast flattened a city block and left a 30-foot crater in the ground.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the explosion, though officials have indicated they believed the Taliban were behind it. The Taliban often do not claim to have organized attacks that kill large numbers of civilians, especially women and children. There has been no official word on what the target for the truck bomb might have been though it is widely thought to have detonated prematurely and destroyed the apartment building, rather than a government target during daylight.
The use of such huge quantities of explosives is rare in Kabul, though in recent weeks truck bombs have become more common in insurgent attacks elsewhere in the country. Security forces say they have thwarted a number of attempts to bring large caches of explosives into the capital. At least one has exploded this year while attempting to enter the city limits.
The attacks on Friday follow a week of turmoil in the Taliban after the Afghan intelligence service announced that their leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had been dead for more than two years.
After the Taliban confirmed Mullah Omar's death, a leadership struggle engulfed the upper echelons of the group, which is holding meetings in the Pakistani city of Quetta in an effort to resolve the crisis.
There appears to be no easing in the intensity of the fighting between the Taliban and Afghan forces, which has caused almost 5,000 civilian casualties this year, according to a recent report by the United Nations.