Attack on Kabul CIA office kills 1 American
hosted.ap.org
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan employed by the U.S. government killed one American and wounded another in an attack on a CIA office in Kabul, officials said Monday.
The shooting Sunday evening is the most recent in a growing number of attacks this year by Afghans working with the country’s international allies. Some assailants have turned out to be Taliban sleeper agents, while others have been motivated by personal grievances.
Gunfire was first heard sometime after 8 p.m. local time around the former Ariana Hotel, a building that ex-U.S. intelligence officials said is the CIA station in Kabul. The spy agency occupied the heavily secured building just blocks from the Afghan presidential palace in late 2001 after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban.
The U.S. Embassy said an Afghan employee of the complex shot dead an American citizen and wounded another before being killed.
“The motivation for the attack is still under investigation,” the embassy said in a statement.
Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall declined to comment on what the targeted annex was used for, citing security reasons. Sundwall said the Afghan employee was not authorized to carry a weapon, and it was not clear how the man was able to get a gun into the secured compound.
The embassy did not provide information on the American who was killed, and said the person wounded in the shooting was taken to a military hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening. It said the embassy has “resumed business operations.”
The attack came less than two weeks after militants fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles at the U.S. Embassy, NATO headquarters and other buildings in Kabul, killing seven Afghans. No embassy or NATO staff members were hurt in the 20-hour assault. But it plunged U.S.-Pakistan relations to new lows as U.S. officials accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency of supporting insurgents in planning and executing the Sept. 13 attack.
More at link above.