Two NATO soldiers were killed by their Afghan colleagues on Thursday, the latest in a series of such attacks after the burning of Holy Quran at a US base sparked widespread violent protests. The soldiers were identified as Americans by an Afghan official, who said they were killed at a military outpost in the insurgency-plagued southern province of Kandahar, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban. NATO’s US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the soldiers died when a man “believed to be an Afghan National Army service member” and another in civilian clothing turned their weapons on the troops.
The civilian was a literacy teacher working in the outpost who grabbed a weapon from a soldier and opened fire, Zhary district chief Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi told AFP.
Other troops returned fire, killing the teacher and an Afghan army soldier, Sarhadi said. If the dead are confirmed to be US troops, it will take the death toll to six Americans killed by Afghan colleagues within a week since angry protests erupted over the Quran burning at a US military base near Kabul. Two days earlier, two American troops were killed by an Afghan soldier who turned his weapon on them as demonstrators approached their base in the east of the country.