Attack in northern Balkh province came during afternoon prayers
Afghan soldiers stand guard at the gate of a military compound after an attack by gunmen in Mazar-e- Sharif province, Afghanistan, on Friday. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Ehsanullah Amiri and Jessica Donati - Wall Street Journal
KABUL—Taliban fighters entered the Afghan army’s regional headquarters for the north hidden in military vehicles on Friday and went on a shooting spree that killed more than 100 people, Afghan and U.S. officials said Saturday, in the latest sign of an emboldened insurgency that threatens the central government.
The attack involved at least eight Taliban militants who caught the soldiers off-guard during Friday prayers, when many were unarmed in a mosque on the base or having lunch at a nearby dining facility.
“Attackers blew up a military vehicle full of explosives at first security check post of the compound,” an Afghan military official said. “After that, they got into the compound in a second military vehicle.”
The operation to clear the attackers from the army’s northern headquarters in Balkh province, one of the more peaceful parts of the country, took several hours, as Afghan special forces drove out attackers holed up in buildings on the base.
“The Afghan commandos came and saved the day,” a coalition official said on condition of anonymity, adding that 130 soldiers had been killed in the attack. “Truth has to always be told out of respect to those lost.”
The Afghan army denied figures provided by the coalition, saying fewer than a dozen had been killed, while provincial officials accused the army of trying to coverup the scale of the incident.
Afghan and foreign officials similarly suspect the Afghan army underreported the number of casualties in last month’s deadly military hospital attack, in which at least 50 people were killed when militants stormed the facility disguised as doctors.
“They started shooting at everyone as they were coming out of the mosque,” an Afghan official said, adding that the provincial government had warned the army of an attack, but the report had been ignored. “It took a really long time to clear because two attackers got inside the building.”
The spokesman for the northern Afghan corps, Abdul Qahar Aram, on Saturday said the attack killed 11 people. It had lasted several hours, he said, and that five militants had been killed during the operation to secure the base, while a sixth had been caught alive.
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The U.S. military, which has a presence at the base, initially said that probably more than 50 Afghan soldiers and civilian contractors working there had been killed in the attack. Other Afghan officials confirmed the figure provided by the U.S. military, accusing the Afghan army of underreporting the number of casualties.
The Taliban in a statement on Twitter claimed responsibility for the attack, which targeted the 209 Corps base in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of the province and killed over 100 people.
The U.S. military coalition in the country didn’t immediately say whether U.S. and German soldiers, who maintain a presence at a base in Mazar-e-Sharif, were involved in the incident but said no coalition forces were killed or wounded.
The Taliban are the country’s largest insurgent group and control or influence almost half of the country, according to U.S. government estimates, threatening to overrun at least a half-dozen provincial capitals this year.
Islamic State, while relatively small in Afghanistan compared with the Taliban, is also seen as a growing threat in the war-torn country and has proved resilient despite being targeted last week by the U.S. military’s “Mother of All Bombs.”
The bomb targeted caves and tunnels in the mountainous Mohmand Valley in Achin district, where U.S. and Afghan forces are camped out in an effort to clear the area of Islamic State.
The Taliban attack at the army’s northern headquarters followed an Islamic State ambush late Thursday on U.S. and Afghan special forces soldiers camped near a valley in east Afghanistan, where the U.S. military dropped its GBU-43, or Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, on April 13 targeting a militant stronghold.
The U.S. military didn’t immediately comment on the ambush by Islamic State militants on Thursday. An Afghan official said a “large group” of Islamic State fighters had attacked the soldiers and all the militants were killed after a battle that lasted several hours. Two Afghan soldiers were wounded, the official said, and there were no U.S. casualties.
—Ben Kesling in Washington contributed to this article.
