KABUL: Insurgents fired rockets into an American base in Afghanistan and damaged the parked plane of the visiting chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, the US-led military coalition said yesterday. The general was safe in his quarters at the time but had to take another aircraft out of the country.

The rocket strike that hit the C-17 military transport plane of US Army Gen. Martin Dempsey was yet another propaganda coup for the Taleban after they claimed to have shot down a US helicopter last week.

It also followed a string of disturbing killings of US military trainers by their Afghan partners or militants dressed in Afghan uniform. Such attacks killed 10 Americans in the last two weeks alone. Taleban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place late Monday night at the Bagram Air Field outside Kabul, saying Dempsey's plane was targeted by insurgents “using exact information”about where it would be. Two maintenance workers were slightly injured by shrapnel from the two rockets fired into, coalition spokesman Jamie Graybeal said.

Dempsey finished his mission in Afghanistan and had left yesterday morning on a different plane, said Graybeal. A helicopter on the base was also damaged in the attack, according to NATO.

“Because there was some damage to the exterior of the aircraft, Gen. Dempsey left Afghanistan on a different C-17,”Pentagon spokeswoman Maj. Cathy Wilkinson. Graybeal cast doubt on the idea that Dempsey's plane may have been hit by any precision attack. He said that insurgent rocket and mortar attacks are “not infrequent”at Bagram and that such fire most often comes from so far away that it's virtually impossible to hit specific targets.

Wilkinson also said it was unlikely the attack was aimed specifically at Dempsey's plane. “Indirect fire at Bagram is not unusual, so we don't believe his aircraft was targeted.”

Bagram is a sprawling complex about an hour's drive north of Kabul that usually serves as the first point of entrance for US officials visiting the country.