NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, said on Saturday he was recalling all staff working at ministries in the Afghan capital after two American officers were shot dead inside the Interior Ministry.
“For obvious force protection reasons, I have also taken immediate measures to recall all other ISAF personnel working in ministries in and around Kabul,” Allen said in a statement.
Separately, the Pentagon decried as “unacceptable” the killing of two US military advisers in Kabul and called on Afghan authorities to better protect coalition forces and curtail raging violence. “This act is unacceptable, and the US condemns it in the strongest possible terms,” said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s spokesman George Little. The two Americans, working as International Security Assistance Force officers in the NATO coalition, were in the interior ministry when “an individual” turned his weapon against the pair, NATO said, without giving further details. Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying it was in revenge for the burning of the Holy Quran at a US-run military base — an incident that forced US President Barack Obama to apologise to the Afghan people. Little said Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak telephoned Panetta on Saturday and “apologised for today’s incident” and offered condolences to family members of those killed.
Panetta urged Wardak and “the Afghan government to take decisive action to protect coalition forces and curtail the violence in Afghanistan after a challenging week in the country,” Little said. Wardak also assured his American counterpart that Afghan President Hamid Karzai “was assembling the religious leaders, parliamentarians, justices of the Supreme Court, and other senior Afghan officials to take urgent steps to do so,” the spokesman added.
