Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Afghan Military Pilot Opens Fire on Foreign Troops, Killing 9

NATO says an Afghan military pilot has opened fire on foreign troops in Kabul, killing eight coalition service members and a contractor.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said the shooting happened Wednesday inside a facility used by the Afghan Air Force, after an argument at the airport in the capital.

NATO did not give the nationalities of the troops who were killed.

There have been a number of attacks on coalition forces either by a member of the Afghan military or someone wearing one of their uniforms.

Earlier this month, an Afghan border guard shot and killed two U.S. soldiers in northern Faryab province. In February, a person wearing an Afghan army uniform killed three German soldiers and wounded six others in Baghlan province.

Meanwhile, Afghan officials say troops have recaptured 71 of the 488 inmates who used a 300-meter-long tunnel to escape from a prison in southern Kandahar province on Sunday.

Security has been tightened along Kandahar's border with Pakistan, and officials say biometric data on each prisoner will help identify and capture the remaining inmates, most of them Taliban militants.

But Interpol said Wednesday Afghan authorities have not been trained to take photographs and DNA of prisoners, or to share the information with international law enforcement. The group said a lack of training is "an unacceptable gap in global security."

Afghanistan's Justice Minister Abibullah Ghalab said the jailbreak must have involved inside collaborators, but he added that Afghan and international forces should have detected the plot.

The Taliban claimed responsibility. It said the prison break was five months in the making, with diggers starting the tunnel from under a nearby house.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.