U.S. major general killed in Afghanistan attack

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An American major general was shot to death yesterday when a gunman dressed as an Afghan soldier turned on allied troops, wounding about 15 including a German general and two Afghan generals.

The American officer was Maj. Gen. Harold Greene, a U.S. official said. An engineer by training, Greene, 55, was involved in preparing Afghan forces for the time when U.S.-coalition troops leave at the end of this year. He was the deputy commanding general, Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan.

Greene was the highest-ranked American officer to die in the line of duty in the nation's post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the highest-ranked officer killed in combat since the Vietnam War, in which five major generals were killed.

The attack at Marshal Fahim National Defense University underscored the tensions that persist as the U.S. combat role winds down in Afghanistan -- and it wasn't the only assault by an Afghan ally on coalition forces yesterday. 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.

Early indications suggested the Afghan gunman who killed Greene was inside a building and fired indiscriminately from a window at people gathered outside, the U.S. official said. There was no indication that Greene was specifically targeted.

The Pentagon's press secretary, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, said earlier the general and other officials were on a routine visit to the military university on a base west of Kabul.

A U.S. official said that of the estimated 15 wounded, about half were Americans, several of them in serious condition.

U.S. officials still asserted confidence in their partnership with the Afghan military, which appears to be holding its own against the Taliban but will soon be operating independently once most U.S.-led coalition forces leave at the end of the year.

The White House said President Barack Obama was briefed on the shooting. Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel both spoke with Gen. Joseph Dunford, the top U.S. commander in Kabul, who said a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation was underway and who assured his bosses he still had confidence in the Afghan military.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid praised in a statement the "Afghan soldier" who carried out the attack. He did not claim the Taliban carried out the attack.

Such assaults are sometimes claimed by the Taliban insurgency as proof of their infiltration. Others are attributed to personal disputes or resentment by Afghans at the continued foreign troop presence in their country.

Insider attacks rose sharply in 2012, with more than 60 coalition troops -- mostly Americans -- killed in 40-plus attacks. U.S. commanders imposed a series of precautionary tactics, and the number of such attacks declined sharply last year.