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Afghan Policeman Turns Gun On Colleagues, Killing 7

An Afghan laborer walks past a gate of Camp Qargha as Afghanistan National Army soldiers stand guard, west of Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday.
Massoud Hossaini
/
AP
An Afghan laborer walks past a gate of Camp Qargha as Afghanistan National Army soldiers stand guard, west of Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday.

A day after a man dressed in an Afghan military uniform opened fire at service members from the NATO-led coalition, another insider attack is making news.

The Associated Press reports:

"An Afghan policeman turned his gun on his colleagues at a police checkpoint in the country's south, killing seven policemen, a provincial official said Wednesday.

"In the Uruzgan attack, provincial spokesman Doost Mohammad Nayab, said the attacker opened fire and shot and killed seven of his colleagues at the checkpoint, then stole their weapons and fled in a police car.

"No one immediately claimed responsibility for the assault but Nayab says the shooter had Taliban connections and blamed the insurgents for the attack."

As we reported, the attacker in Tuesday's green-on-blue incident killed U.S. Maj. Gen. Harold Greene and wounded more than a dozen people, including a German brigadier general.

NPR's Sean Carberry reports from Kabul that NATO says everyone who was wounded in the attack is expected to make it.

Sean adds that the identity of the shooter has not been released. That attack, he says, was only the second deadly green-on-blue attack this year. In 2012, for example, there were 40 insider attacks.

As for today's green-on-green attack, Sean says those kinds of incidents have been more common this year than green-on-blue attacks, but we tend not to hear about those.

We'll leave you with a roundup of headlines:

-- "Slain General in Afghanistan Was Quietly Effective Leader, Known for Technical Skill" (New York Times)

-- Afghan attack: General Harold Greene was 'true hero' (BBC)

-- US general killed in Afghanistan: How big is threat of insider attacks? (Yahoo!)

-- Insider attacks: Why do some Afghan forces turn and kill allies? (CNN)

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.
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