One U.S. service member was killed and another wounded in an apparent insider attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday, U.S. officials announced.
A spokeswoman for Operation Resolute Support said that the two service members were medically evacuated to Bagram Airfield, where the wounded soldier is in stable condition. No information was available about their identities or ranks, though the name of the service member killed is expected to be released after family is notified.
Initial reports said the attacker was a member of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, and was immediately killed by other Afghan Forces.
The incident is under investigation.
It is part of a recent seeming uptick in insider attacks on NATO troops in Afghanistan. One U.S. service member was killed and two others wounded during an attack in July, and a U.S. service member was killed in an attack on Labor Day that left another injured. An insider attack in Herat province last month also killed one and wounded two service members.
Insider attacks on coalition troops, known as “green-on-blue attacks,” saw an upswing starting in 2011, according to RealClearDefense. In 2012, they accounted for 15 percent of deaths among coalition forces; in 2015, 80 percent, even as the number of overall deaths among coalition fores dropped dramatically across those years.
The NATO-led mission began in 2015 and involves more than 13,000 troops.
