Shooter in Afghan army uniform kills NATO trooper

Kabul: A man in an Afghan army uniform shot and killed a NATO service member Saturday, and the Taliban said the assailant was a sleeper agent who had infiltrated the Afghan military.

Cases of foreign troops being attacked by rogue policemen and soldiers - or militants impersonating them - are on the rise as international forces are increasingly partnered with Afghan troops preparing to take the lead in security by the end of 2014.

The shooting was part of a spate of weekend attacks that killed at least 10 people, including three other foreign troops. The nationalities of the slain foreign soldiers were not released.

Saturday's shooting attack by the Afghan soldier took place at a military compound in Helmand province that was occupied by both Afghan and coalition troops, an Afghan military official in the area said. He said the NATO service member was killed in his quarters and the shooter got away before the victim's body was discovered.

"This was our person," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said in a text message to The Associated Press. "Now he is with us."

The spokesman claimed that the gunman killed a total of five NATO service members. However, the U.S.-led coalition reported the death of only one.

Rasool Safi, a spokesman for the Afghan National Army Corps 215 in Helmand province, said he did not know whether the shooter was an enlisted soldier.

Insurgents have often worn uniforms of Afghan security forces as disguises to get inside heavily guarded military bases and target international and government forces. Enlisted Afghan soldiers and police also have turned on their NATO and Afghan colleagues - sometimes because arguments have inflamed tensions or because of an alliance or sympathy with the Taliban.

In May, two U.S. service members were killed by an Afghan policeman in Helmand province. The two were mentoring an Afghan National Civil Order brigade and were shot and killed inside the police compound as they sat down to eat lunch.

Since March 2009, at least 40 coalition troops have been killed in more than 20 shootings by members of the Afghan security forces or assailants wearing Afghan uniforms.

In about half the cases, attackers impersonated Afghan policemen or soldiers, coalition officials have said. Afghan security force uniforms are easily obtained at stores in the capital of Kabul, despite efforts to crack down on such illegal sales. About 10 of the shootings were attributed to combat stress or unknown reasons.

It is not known how many members of the Afghan security forces have been killed in such attacks. In April, a man in an Afghan army uniform penetrated to the heart of the Afghan Defense Ministry in Kabul and gunned down two Afghan soldiers.

NATO also reported the killings of three other service members - one in a roadside bombing Saturday in southern Afghanistan. a second in an insurgent attack Friday in the west and a third during a military operation Friday in the south. No other details about the deaths were released. They raised to 31 the number of international troop deaths in Afghanistan so far this month, including at least 14 Americans, according to an Associated Press tally.

Also in the west, insurgents ambushed an army patrol in the Bala Buluk district of Farah province, killing at least six Afghan soldiers and wounding 10 others, Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry said. Azimi said the patrol was part of an Afghan military operation that had killed at least 12 militants.