E-Paper
8 CIA men killed in suicide attack
A suicide bomber infiltrated a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least eight Americans in what is believed to be the deadliest single attack on US intelligence personnel in the eight-year-long war and one of the deadliest in the agency’s history, US officials said.
A suicide bomber infiltrated a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least eight Americans in what is believed to be the deadliest single attack on US intelligence personnel in the eight-year-long war and one of the deadliest in the agency’s history, US officials said.
The attack represented an audacious blow to intelligence operatives at the vanguard of US counterterrorism operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing officials whose job involves plotting strikes against the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other extremist groups that are active on the frontier between the two nations.
The facility that was targeted Forward Operating Base Chapman is in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, which borders North Waziristan, the Pakistani tribal area that is believed to be al-Qaeda’s home base.
US sources confirmed that all the dead and injured were civilians and said they believed that most, if not all, were CIA employees or contractors. At least one Afghan civilian also was killed.
It is unclear exactly how the assailant managed to gain access to the heavily guarded US-run post, which serves as an operations and surveillance centre for the CIA. The bomber struck in what one US official described as the base’s fitness centre.
In addition to the dead, eight people were wounded, several of them seriously, U.S. government officials said.
While many details remained vague, the attack appears to have killed more US intelligence personnel than have died in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion began in late 2001.
The CIA has previously acknowledged the deaths of four officers in fighting in Afghanistan in the past eight years.
A former senior agency official said it was the worst single-day casualty toll for the agency since eight CIA officers were killed in the 1983 attack on the US Embassy in Lebanon in April 1983.
