AFP PHOTO / BRONWEN ROBERTS
Taliban insurgents killed ten Afghani soldiers on Monday, AFP reported. The men were in an army post in the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, which the Taliban men successfully invaded before dawn.
It is not yet known how the Taliban were able to infiltrate the army posts, but there is suspicion that they had help from the inside.
According Daud Ahmadi, a Helmand provincial spokesperson, there was an “insider plot” where soldiers within the army post helped the Taliban gunmen infiltrate the post.
“The Taliban attacked a post in Washir and killed ten soldiers. Four other soldiers were wounded and five others have gone with the Taliban with their guns. It was an insider plot,” Ahmadi told AFP.
Colonel Mohammad Ismaiel Hotak, deputy head of coordination between the Afghan army and NATO, could not confirm whether or not the attack was an “inside job” but told AFP an investigation was underway.
Ahmadi later retracted his statement, however, and is now claiming the five missing men simply fled the scene and were not collaborators with the Taliban.
The Taliban have officially taken responsibility for the attack. If they indeed had help from the inside, it would not be the first time.
This is the latest in a string of “insider killings”, although the Taliban usually uses Afghani troops to kill coalition soldiers.
An Afghani soldier killed two NATO International Security Assistance Force soldiers in the eastern Laghman on Monday.
ISAF soldiers returned fire and killed the Afghani soldiers. This brought the death toll of those killed in insider attacks against NATO to 12 so far this month. There have been a total of 42 deaths attributed to such attacks in 2012, mostly on Americans, accounting for 13 percent of all NATO deaths.
In the past, NATO tried to attribute most of the insider killings to cultural differences and personal problems between coalition soldiers and Afghanis.
NATO commander in Afghanistan General John Allen confirmed last week, however, that the Taliban was in fact responsible for most of these attacks.
The Afghani Government announced it would re-examine over 350,000 police and military personnel files in an attempt to limit such attacks.
