The shooting was part of a spate of weekend attacks that killed at least nine people, including two other foreign troops. The nationalities of the slain foreign soldiers were not released. “This was our person,” Taleban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said in a text message to The Associated Press. “Now he is with us.” The spokesman claimed that the gunman killed a total of five NATO service members. However, the US-led coalition reported the death of only one.
Rasool Safi, a spokesman for the Afghan National Army Corps 215 in Helmand province, said he did not know whether the shooter was an enlisted solider.
Since March 2009, at least 40 coalition troops have been killed in more than 20 shootings by members of the Afghan security forces or assailants wearing Afghan uniforms.
NATO also reported the killings of two other service members — one in a roadside bombing Saturday in southern Afghanistan and another in an insurgent attack Friday in the west. Those deaths raised to 30 the number of international troop deaths in Afghanistan so far this month, including at least 14 Americans, according to an Associated Press tally.
Also in the west, insurgents ambushed an army patrol in the Bala Buluk district of Farah province, killing at least six Afghan soldiers and wounding 10 others, Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry said. Azimi said the patrol was part of an Afghan military operation that had killed at least 12 militants.
