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| Afghan villagers look on as a crane hoists away the wreckage of a civilian bus, which was hit by a remote-controlled bomb, in the Paghman district of Kabul yesterday |
A Nato soldier was killed in Afghanistan yesterday in the latest of a series of “green-on-blue” attacks in which Afghan troops attack their US-led allies, the military said.
“An International Security Assistance Force service member died when two individuals wearing Afghan National Army uniforms turned their weapons against ISAF service members in eastern Afghanistan today,” ISAF said.
Nato gave no further details and, in line with policy, left the identification of the dead soldier to the home country.
The shooting is the latest in an increasing number of attacks in which Afghan soldiers have turned their weapons against Nato troops helping Kabul fight a decade-long insurgency by hardline Taliban Islamists.
Some of the attacks are claimed by the Taliban, who say they have infiltrated Afghan army ranks, but many are attributed to cultural differences and antagonism between the allied forces.
The attack came on the same day that nine civilians were killed in a roadside bomb explosion on the outskirts of Kabul and a suicide truck bomb attack was launched against a Nato base south of the capital.
A French soldier and around 10 Taliban fighters were also killed in an early morning ambush and subsequent firefight during a joint operation with the Afghan army in Kapisa province near Kabul, French officials said.
A statement from Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault’s office said a French soldier died and another was wounded “during a clash with insurgents” and that the wounded soldier was expected to survive.
The statement said the soldiers were from the elite 13th Chasseurs Alpin Battalion. The dead soldier was “part of an assistance team advising Afghan units,” a statement from President Francois Hollande’s office said.
The French military in Paris said that around 130 French soldiers came under small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade attack at around 6am while securing an area near a bridge outside Tagab village.
Chief-of-staff spokesman Bertrand Bonneau said that around 10 Taliban were killed during the firefight that followed the ambush and that an Afghan soldier was also wounded.
Two wounded French soldiers were airlifted to Kabul but one died en route, the military said.
A total of 88 French soldiers have died in Afghanistan since they first deployed there in 2001.
French forces are now deployed only in Kabul and in Kapisa, an extremely unstable eastern province where French troops have suffered numerous deadly attacks from the Taliban.
The French military in July handed control of Kapisa to local forces, but French soldiers continue to help train them as preparations for the pullout go ahead.
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.
Before his election in May, Hollande vowed to speed up France’s pullout so it would be completed by the end of 2012 -- a year earlier than Paris initially planned and two years before the Nato deadline.
Under Paris’s timetable, of the 3,000 French soldiers currently deployed in Afghanistan, 1,400 will remain after the end of 2012 to oversee the return of equipment and train local forces.