A U.S. soldier was killed and several others injured in Afghanistan Wednesday when an Afghan soldier opened fire on them in the first insider attack in months, the Pentagon said.
The attack occurred after a meeting between the U.S. Embassy and the provincial governor of Jalalabad at his official compound. The assailant was killed when U.S. troops returned fire and killed him, the AP reported.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren confirmed the death of the American soldier and said “several” other U.S. troops were injured. He said further details were not available. “The incident is being investigated,” Warren said.
Warren said all the wounded were evacuated and taken to regional medical facilities.
The insider attack — known as a “green on blue” attack — was the first since January, when an Afghan soldier killed a U.S. contractor, the AP reported.
Green-on-blue attacks — so-called because the assailants are U.S.- and coalition-trained and -equipped Afghan soldiers who either slipped through the vetting process or were turned against coalition forces after training — have sharply decreased in the last few years.
The last high-profile green-on-blue attack occurred in August 2014, when U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Harold Greene, who was serving in Afghanistan to train its security forces, was killed at a training range in Kabul.
This story published at 11:02 a.m. and has been updated since then.
