AFGHANISTAN: U.S. Army General Killed 14 Wounded in Insider Attack UPDATE

Kabul Carnage.

UPDATES with additional Kirby comment about shooter from press conference transcript and background on Greene from Reuters report

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby reports on Kabul shootings at briefing in Washington.
(Defense Dept. photo by Casper Manlangit)

A man wearing an Afghan Army uniform opened up with a machine gun during a visit by coalition military brass Tuesday (August 5) in Kabul, killing a U.S. Army major general and wounding at least 14 others in the room including a German brigadier general and three Afghan officers.

The slain two-star general, the highest ranking Western military officer killed in Afghanistan, was identified as Major General Harold Greene, the coalition mission’s deputy commander for training Afghan troops. As with many of these so called green-on-blue attacks it is not immediately clear whether the attacker was an actual member of the Afghan National Army or an infiltrator from the Taliban or al Qaeda who acquired an Afghan uniform.

It was the 55-year-old Greene’s first combat deployment to Afghanistan after a lengthy Army career as an engineer and logistics expert, according to the Los Angeles Times, Greene, assigned to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the coalition military command in Afghanistan, is believed to be the highest-ranking U.S. military officer killed overseas since the Vietnam War, according to Reuters.

At a news briefing, Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the coalition troops were on a routine site visit to the Marshal Fahim National Defense University, the academy for Afghan commissioned and non-commissioned officers. Kirby said there were a number of casualties “perhaps up to 15” including some Americans. Many were seriously wounded. “The assailant was killed,” he said.

Kirby stressed that an investigation was just getting underway and not all the facts are in yet. “We believe this individual was a member of the Afghan national security forces,” the admiral said, adding: “We need to let the investigation proceed to figure out exactly who this was before we can leap to any conclusions about the vetting process.”

According to  The Long War Journal, Tuesday’s attack is the third reported green-on-blue attack in Afghanistan this year — and the sixth to have taken place in the Afghan capital since January 2007. The website has kept extensive and updated statistics and analysis of insider attacks since a 2012 Special Report.