By The Washington Post

Published: Sunday, December 2, 2012, 8:42 p.m.
Updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2013

KABUL, Afghanistan — A squad of nine suicide bombers attacked a major U.S.-Afghan air base in the eastern city of Jalalabad just after dawn Sunday, exploding bombs at the front gate and sparking a lengthy firefight with both Afghan and NATO forces inside.

Officials said the attackers killed at least five people before being either shot or blown up by their own explosives. As the battle raged, American assault helicopters fired from overhead. Three Afghan security force members and two civilians died, officials said.

An American spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, said three foreign troops were wounded.

The Taliban immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which was reminiscent of a frontal assault on the base in February, when a suicide bombing left nine Afghans dead. The base, located at a former commercial and military airfield, is a major transport center for the U.S. military in eastern Afghanistan.

One Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in a message that “a number of our devotees” attacked the base and “brought heavy casualties to the enemy.”

A second spokesman, Abdul Balkhi, sent out a series of tweets Sunday that described the attack in great detail. He said two different groups of Taliban had staged it, including six who were wearing U.S. military uniforms and who drove onto the base in a vehicle that they then detonated.

Balkhi said a second group had shot a number of foreign troops in a two-hour fight before being “rewarded with martyrdom.” He said that two “enemy aircraft” had been destroyed and that much of the base had been “engulfed in flames.”

This triumphant version of events was partially contradicted by a series of competing tweets and emails from ISAF spokesmen, who portrayed the assault as far less successful.

Lt. Col. Hagen Messner confirmed that the airfield had been attacked at 6 a.m, but he stated that “no insurgents breached the perimeter.” Messner also confirmed that U.S. helicopters were deployed to defend the base, which ISAF officials said was secured soon after the firefight ended.

An official communique from the provincial governor's office in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, said two suicide vehicles had attacked the front gate of the base, followed by three suicide bombers who tried to detonate their explosives but were shot dead by ISAF and Afghan forces.

There are currently no comments for this story.

1. Protests leave few options for Brazil leader
2. Syrian war becomes religious conflict
3. Morsy’s appointees spark clashes across Egypt
4. Obama revives call for reduction in nukes
5. U.S. scraps $7B in military items it can’t bring home from Afghanistan
6. U.S. and Cuba agree to resume migration talks
7. Report: U.S. long ready to aid rebels
8. Turkey seeks negotiated end to continuing unrest
9. Unchecked looting guts Egypt’s heritage, with one ancient site ‘70 percent gone’
10. We only sell real thing, Egyptian grave-robbing family boasts
11. Czech corruption scandal widens

Subscribe today! Click here for our subscription offers.