In the first green-on-blue attack reported in Ghor, a mountainous province in north-central Afghanistan, an Afghan soldier opened fire on Coalition troops in Chaghcharan city, wounding at least two of them. The condition of one of the wounded soldiers is said to be critical.
According to the Khaama Press report, the provincial governor’s spokesman said an Afghan soldier called on vehicles being driven by Lithuanian troops to stop, then fired a rocket-propelled grenade at one of the armored vehicles, injuring two of the ISAF soldiers. The critically injured soldier has been taken out of the area for treatment. Local officials said the attack took place yesterday.
The assailant was arrested after the attack, Khaama reported. Pajhwok News said he was being interrogated, and that the incident had occurred late on April 7 in the village of Kasi on the outskirts of Chaghcharan, the provincial capital.
According to the 15min news agency, authorities said that an Afghan National Army soldier fired a hand-held antitank grenade projector at the Lithuanian soldiers’ armored vehicle, wounding two of them. Lithuanian Armed Forces Joint Staff Commander Brigadier General Vilmantas Tamošaitis said the attack occurred when the patrol was passing the ANA control post.
Lithuania currently has more than 200 soldiers in Ghor, but they are all scheduled to leave the province by the end of September. On Feb. 23, security responsibility for four districts in Ghor — Lal Wa Sarjangal, Dowlatyar, Chaharsada, and Chaghcharan, where the recent attack took place — was transferred from ISAF to the Afghan National Army. Responsibility for the rest of the province will be turned over to the ANA by the time the Lithuanian troops have withdrawn.
On Feb. 15, one week before the initial security handover, a Taliban court in Chaharsada, one of the four districts recently put under ANA security responsibility, publicly punished a couple for having had sexual relations, Pajhwok News reported. The man received 27 lashes and the woman 40, and they were both expelled from the province. A provincial high peace council member told Pajhwok that “the Taliban ran their own courts in areas under their control.”
Attacks by Afghan forces on Coalition forces in Afghanistan have diminished since a relative peak late last summer, when partnering between Coalition and Afghan forces was reduced, new security measures were introduced, and the pace of the US withdrawal began picking up. So far this year, there have been a total of four attacks, including the recent attack in Ghor. For more information, see LWJ report, Green-on-blue attacks in Afghanistan: the data.
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1 Comment
possibly an ‘omen’ of more to come?