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NATO Stops Insurgent Raids on Afghan Bases

29 August 2010 05:00 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. NATO says coalition forces stopped attacks by insurgents, some of them wearing American military uniforms and suicide vests, at two U.S.-run bases in eastern Afghanistan, APA reports quoting voanews.com website.
A NATO spokesman says the insurgents opened fire before dawn Saturday with machine guns and rockets on Forward Operating Base Salerno and nearby Camp Chapman in Khost province.
The coalition says its forces killed 15 insurgents near Salerno, six near Chapman and three others in an air strike as they tried to escape the area. Five insurgents were detained.
NATO said in a later statement that two members of the international security force were killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, but it did not give specifics.
A Taliban spokesmansaid the militant group attacked with about 30 fighters, including suicide bombers.
NATO identified one of the insurgents killed by the air strike as Mudasir, a senior explosives expert with the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network who facilitated suicide bomb attacks from neighboring Pakistan.
A reporter for VOA said the Taliban ringleader of the attack, Qarieshaq, also was killed as he tried to escape to Pakistan.
The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, told reporters Saturday that militant groups like the Haqqani network remain a problem because they have sanctuaries in Pakistan. He said more coordination is needed with the Pakistani military to help root out those militant cells.
Camp Chapman was the scene of a suicide bombing in December that killed seven U.S. intelligence agents.