A NATO soldier was killed Saturday when insurgents attacked a military base in eastern Afghanistan, officials said.
Five insurgents launched the early-morning assault on a joint Afghan-NATO base in Ghani Khel, a district in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.
One attacker detonated a Toyota Corolla packed with explosives at the entrance while four others tried to storm the base, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
A 40-minute firefight ensued, and when it was over the militants lay dead at the scene, Abdulzai said. No Afghan soldiers were reported killed in the incident.
The US-led military coalition, known as the International Security Assistance Force, confirmed that one of its soldiers was killed in a suicide attack. The coalition declined to immediately identify the soldier’s nationality.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement.
In a separate incident Saturday in Nangarhar, a roadside bomb struck a police vehicle as it was on patrol, killing three Afghan police officers, officials said.
