KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. officials prepared Wednesday to fly the body of a two-star general slain in an Afghan "insider attack" back home, as a similar attack saw an Afghan police officer drug and shoot dead seven of his colleagues, authorities said.
The investigation into the killing of Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, the highest-ranked U.S. officer to be slain in combat since 1970 in the Vietnam War, continued Wednesday without any clear answers into why a man dressed in an Afghan army uniform opened fire. The shooting wounded about 15 people, including a German general and two Afghan generals.
In a statement, NATO said Greene's body was being prepared to be flown to the U.S. via Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
Greene, a 34-year U.S. Army veteran, was the highest-ranked American officer killed in combat in the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. About half of the wounded in Tuesday's attack at Marshal Fahim National Defense University were Americans, several of them reported to be in serious condition.
The attack wasn't the only assault by an Afghan ally on coalition forces Tuesday. In eastern Paktia province, an Afghan police guard exchanged fire with NATO troops near the governor's office, provincial police said. The guard was killed in the gunfight.
A third "insider attack" happened late Tuesday in the Uruzgan provincial capital, Tirin Kot, where an Afghan police officer killed seven of his colleagues at a checkpoint, then stole their weapons and fled in a police car, provincial spokesman Doost Mohammad Nayab said.
A doctor at a local hospital told The Associated Press it appeared the police officer drugged his colleagues before the shooting. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to release the information. Nayab later denied that the police officers had been drugged and said the officer involved had Taliban connections, without elaborating.
Read Thursday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more.