KABUL, June 30, (AFP): Gunmen set off a car bomb and fired rocket propelled grenades at one of the biggest Nato bases in Afghanistan on Wednesday in a brazen daylight attack claimed by the hardline Islamist Taleban.
Several assailants were killed during the strike on the Jalalabad air base in eastern Afghanistan, and two service personnel were injured, according to the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force.
“Jalalabad airfield is under attack,” ISAF spokesman Lieutenant-Commander Iain Baxter told AFP as the battle was under way.
Concerns about the progress of the war against the hardline Islamist Taleban have mounted following the dramatic sacking of Petreaus’s predecessor, US General Stanley McChrystal, and an increasing death toll among foreign troops.
Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed claimed the attack — the latest strike to hit Nato bases in Afghanistan in recent weeks — in a telephone call to AFP.
“Afghan and ISAF forces repelled a number of insurgents when they attacked Jalalabad airfield this morning using a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, rocket-propelled grenades, and small arms fire,” an ISAF statement said, adding that the assailants did not breach the base perimeter.
Several insurgents were killed, it said, without disclosing how or how many, adding that two members of the security force were injured. Their nationalities were not given.
“This was not only an attack on a combined Afghan and ISAF facility, it was also an attack on the people of Afghanistan,” ISAF said.
Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, spokesman for the government of the province of Nangarhar, of which Jalalabad is the capital, said suicide bombers were also involved in the strike.
Jalalabad is one of Nato’s largest bases in Afghanistan, after Kandahar in the south and Bagram, north of Kabul, which have both been attacked by insurgents in recent months.
Last month, the Taleban attacked the main Nato base in Kandahar, the heartland of the Islamists’ insurgency and the focus of a US-led campaign to drive out the militants.
A similar attack in May on Bagram airfield about 60 kilometres (35 miles) north of Kabul triggered several hours of fighting, resulting in the deaths of an American contract worker and 16 militants.
A total of 100 Nato troops serving in Afghanistan have been killed in June, making it the deadliest month for the alliance since the US-led invasion of 2001 that ousted the hardline Islamist Taleban.
Confirmed
General David Petraeus cruised Wednesday to US Senate confirmation as commander of the faltering Afghan campaign in a unanimous vote despite deep US divisions over the nearly nine-year-old war.
The 99-0 vote was a rare display of unity between President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies and Republican foes, months before key November mid-term elections, on the vastly unpopular conflict against Taleban insurgents and their al-Qaeda allies.
“Afghanistan is not a lost cause,” insisted Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who called the task of stabilizing the country “hard but not hopeless.”
Petraeus “has served his country with distinction at a time of great need. We are fortunate that once again he has answered his nation’s call,” said Democratic Senator Carl Levin, the committee’s chairman.
Petraeus, credited in Washington for dragging Iraq back from the brink of civil war with the troop “surge” strategy, warned anxious lawmakers Tuesday that Western forces face “tough fighting” ahead in the bloody insurgency.
“Indeed, it may get more intense in the next few months,” Petraeus, arguably the most revered military officer in the United States, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Petraeus also warned it would take “a number of years” before Afghan security forces could take over for Nato-led troops, a step US officials have described as a precondition for a complete withdrawal.
And in written testimony to the panel, he described the security situation as “tenuous, with instability fueled by a resilient and still-confident insurgency.”
His confirmation vote came with the US public deeply split on the war, with some polls showing most Americans say it was not worth fighting, and lawmakers feuding bitterly over Obama’s July 2011 deadline to begin the US withdrawal.
“Regardless of who is in command, the president’s current strategy in Afghanistan is counterproductive,” warned Democratic Senator Russell Feingold, who called for a “flexible timetable” for withdrawal, “not just a start date.”
“We need to give our strategy the necessary time to succeed,” said McCain, who has charged that the deadline harms efforts to win over Afghans and reflects overly rosy predictions of progress in the strife-torn country.
Democratic support for the conflict has ebbed so severely that Obama needs Republican backing to get an emergency war spending bill through the House of Representatives in a hard-fought vote expected this week.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pressed lawmakers to approve the money quickly, and Petraeus said Tuesday that any further progress “will require that our work in Afghanistan is fully resourced.”
The Senate vote came amid a new bout of national soul-searching over the war following Obama’s decision to remove General Stanley McChrystal as his top officer in Afghanistan in the wake of a bombshell Rolling Stone magazine article in which the commander disparaged the White House and US allies.
McCain praised McChrystal as an “American hero” and “a man of unrivaled integrity” whose efforts “began to turn around our failing war in Afghanistan.”
Levin did not mention the ousted general directly but noted the events leading up to the nomination of Petraeus “were unforeseen.”
With lawmakers concerned over a rift between military and civilian leaders in Kabul, Petraeus vowed to work closely with his civilian counterparts and also promised to review disputed rules restricting troops’ use of firepower.
Petraeus promised the committee he would strive to forge “unity of effort” with diplomats and White House officials.
He recounted how during his time in Iraq, he worked “very closely” with the US ambassador in Baghdad and that he would do the same with the American ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, as well as Nato and UN envoys.