One international service member and eight Afghan contractors were killed in an attack on a military base in the Afghan capital, a NATO official said on Saturday. The nationality of the NATO soldier was not released.
A number of other NATO service members and foreign contracted civilians were wounded in the Friday night attack, NATO spokesman Col. Brian Tribus said. The Afghans, who were killed, were working for NATO’s Resolute Support mission on Camp Integrity in Kabul, AP reported.
The attack on Camp Integrity late Friday and two massive bombings in the city earlier in the day call into question Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s ability to tamp down the violent insurgency that is roiling the country despite his administration’s focus on making peace with the Taliban.
Confirmation of the contractors’ deaths increases the toll from one of Kabul’s worst days of violence to at least 44. Hundreds were wounded in the three attacks.
The attack on the camp followed within hours of a suicide attack on a police academy in Kabul that killed 20 people and wounded at least 24.
The Taliban said they were behind the academy attack in which a person dressed in police uniform mingled with cadets returning from their weekend break.
Earlier Friday, a truck bomb in a residential area of Kabul killed 15 people and wounded more than 200, in one of the most devastating attacks on the capital since the insurgency began in 2001. The blast flattened a city block and left a 10-meter crater in the ground.
