U.S. and NATO forces are ramping up efforts to train the Afghan army and police before a gradual drawdown of foreign forces begins from July. Under that security transition to Afghan forces, all foreign combat troops are due to leave by the end of 2014.
Highlighting the difficulty of that task, however, have been a string of incidents over the past 18 months where Afghan police and soldiers, or insurgents who have infiltrated security forces, have turned their weapons on their mentors.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said two of its service members had been killed in the latest incident in volatile Helmand province in the south on Thursday.
In line with normal ISAF policy, it did not identify the nationalities of the service members killed. The overwhelming majority of foreign troops in the south are American.
It said they were part of a "mentoring team" working with a brigade of the Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP), a unit of the Afghan National Police.
"The mentoring team was preparing to eat lunch with the ANCOP when a uniformed Afghan National Civil Order Policeman began shooting at ISAF service members, resulting in the two ISAF service members` deaths," the statement said.
It said the policeman who had opened fire was shot and seriously wounded and was undergoing treatment.
U.S. Marine Corps Major General James Laster described the incident as serious and said an investigation was under way.
"We remain committed to our partners and to our mission here," Laster said in the ISAF statement.
In one of the worst "rogue" shootings, an Afghan Air Force pilot killed eight U.S. troops and a U.S. contractor at the military wing of Kabul`s main airport on April 27.
Rapid recruitment into the Afghan security forces, which will be boosted to at least 305,000 by 2011, has raised fears the Taliban have infiltrated sympathisers into the Afghan police and army.
Afghan authorities began tighter vetting of recruits after a renegade soldier killed five British troops in November 2009, but there have still been almost 40 people killed in such incidents since then.
(Uu.B002)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
