Man in Afghan uniform wounds 5 NATO soldiers

KABUL: A man in Afghan army uniform opened fire on NATO soldiers at a military base near Kabul, wounding five, the coalition said yesterday, the latest in a series of so-called "green-on-blue" attacks.
Attacks by Afghan security forces on their allies from the US-led alliance have claimed 26 lives so far this year, according to an AFP tally, with the latest incident taking the total number of such attacks this year to 19.
"An individual wearing Afghan army uniform turned his weapon on coalition soldiers, wounding five," Colonel Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the 130,000-strong US-led NATO coalition force said.
"The wounded coalition soldiers were evacuated to a medical facility."
Dawlat Waziri, an Afghan defense ministry spokesman, confirmed the incident in Maidan Wardak province, a troubled region south of Kabul and said the attack took place inside a military base shared by Afghan and NATO troops.
"A man wearing our army uniform opened fire on the coalition soldiers, wounding five soldiers. The attacker fled the area and we're investigating the incident," Waziri said. An increasing number of Afghan troops have turned their weapons against NATO colleagues helping them fight a decade-long Taliban insurgency.
France hands over Kapisa province to Afghans
The French military officially handed over control of the key Afghan province of Kapisa to local forces yesterday. The transfer is an important stage in France's withdrawal from the war-torn country, which new President Francois Hollande has accelerated by ordering the return of troops by the end of 2012, a year earlier than previously planned.
France is the fifth largest contributor to NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is due to pull out the vast majority of its 130,000 forces by the end of 2014.


Kapisa, an extremely unstable province where French troops have suffered numerous deadly attacks from the Taleban, lies to the northeast of Kabul close to the border with Pakistan's lawless and insurgent-infested tribal areas.
In 2011, 24 French soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, all in Kapisa.
A ceremony in the provincial capital Mahmood-e-Raqi in the presence of French and Afghan military and officials, marked the handover of the province, which was announced by President Hamid Karzai in May.
Before his election in May, Hollande promised to speed up France's withdrawal from Afghanistan so it would be completed by the end of 2012 — a year earlier than Paris initially planned and two years before the NATO deadline.
Yesterday's ceremony "lets everyone see that Afghans are taking over their security. But it is above all a symbol and does not change the transition process", a French security source told AFP.
France plans to withdraw 2,000 troops fighting with ISAF against the decade-long Taleban insurgency this year, leaving behind around 1,500 soldiers to train local forces and help organize the return of military equipment.