Trainee policeman kills 6 US troops in Afghanistan

ASADABAD: Six American soldiers training Afghan police in a Taliban flashpoint were shot dead by one of their students in the deadliest such incident in at least two years, officials said Tuesday.

The shooting, which followed a string of similar attacks on Nato troops, underscores the challenges faced by the US-led mission as it aims to build the national army and police to take responsibility for security by 2014.

Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said the gunman, identified as a local resident who had been in training with Western troops for only a few days, was also killed, and an investigation was underway.

The man, dressed in an Afghan border police uniform, opened fire on Isaf troops during the training mission on Monday, killing six soldiers in Taliban-infested eastern Afghanistan, Nato announced.

A US defence official identified the six troops as Americans but declined to give further details.

The gunman was identified as Azat Gul, a policeman being schooled at the training centre in the Pachir Agam area of Khogyani district by Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province where the incident took place.

"After a few days of training, yesterday he opened fire and killed six American soldiers. The incident is under serious investigation," Abdulzai told AFP.

Americans make up most of the foreign troops based in eastern Afghanistan, one of the worst flashpoints in the nine-year Taliban insurgency.

The deaths brought the number of coalition troop fatalities this year to 668, according to an AFP tally based on that tracked by the independent icasualties.org website. It is the highest annual toll since the US-led invasion in late 2001.

A Taliban spokesman praised the attack in emailed comments carried by the Site Monitoring service. Naming the attacker as Izzatullah, the spokesman said he had shot dead six US soldiers and wounded several others before being killed in return fire. The Taliban have made unsubstantiated claims of attacks on NATO forces.

The United States is bankrolling a massive programme to build Afghanistan's army and police so they can take over responsibility for security by 2014, as pledged by Nato in Lisbon a week ago. However, their efforts are troubled by a series of shootings, either by insurgents dressed in Afghan security uniforms or rogue officers.

An Isaf spokesman said Monday's incident was the deadliest of its type since their database was started more than two years ago.