A man dressed in an Afghan army uniform opened fire Tuesday on foreign troops at a military base, causing casualties, an Afghan military spokesman said.
Nato said it was investigating an “incident” involving both Afghan and international troops at Camp Qargha, a base west of the capital, Kabul, which trains officers for the country’s army.
Gen. Mohammmad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry, wrote on Twitter that “a terrorist using (the) uniform of (the) Afghan Army” opened fire, wounding some. He did not elaborate. Afghan officials declined to immediately comment.
In its statement, Nato said that it was “in the process of assessing the situation.”
Qargha is known as “Sandhurst in the sand,” as British forces oversaw building the officer school and its training program. In a statement, the British Defense Ministry said it was investigating the incident and that “it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.”
The attack comes as so-called “insider attacks” — incidents in which Afghan security turn on their Nato partners — largely dropped last year. In 2013, there were 16 deaths in 10 separate attacks. In 2012, such attacks killed 53 coalition troops in 38 separate attacks.
Such “insider attacks” are sometimes claimed by the Taliban insurgency as proof of their infiltration. Others are attributed to personal disputes or resentment by Afghans who have soured on the continued international presence in their country more than a dozen years after the fall of the Taliban’s ultra-conservative Islamic regime.
Foreign aid workers, contractors and other civilians in Afghanistan are increasingly becoming targets of violence as the US-led military coalition continues a withdrawal to be complete by the end of the year.