WEB DESK
KABUL: At least 140 soldiers had been killed and many injured in a lethal Taliban assault on an Army base in northern Afghanistan Friday, official in Kabul said today, reports NYT . It is seen as the single deadliest known attack on an Afghan military base in the course of the long war.
“Today, there was even a shortage of coffins,” said the official, Ibrahim Khairandish, a member of the provincial council in Balkh Province, where the attack occurred. Citing information from army officials, Mr. Khairandish said 60 soldiers had also been wounded in the attack.
The soldiers, most of them unarmed, were gunned down while eating lunch or emerging from Friday Prayer at the headquarters of the Afghan Army’s 209th Corps in Balkh by assailants in military uniforms who entered after another attacker had detonated explosives at a check post. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault.
“Most of those killed were in the mosque; some of them were in the dining facility,” Mr. Khairandish said.
Gen. Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said on Saturday that “more than a hundred soldiers were killed and wounded” in the attack, but he declined to discuss precise numbers.
“In continuing with their barbarism and criminality, the Taliban carried out a group attack in the 209th Corps mosque when our soldiers were standing for group prayers. This was against all human and Islamic values,” General Waziri said.
President Ashraf Ghani arrived in Balkh Province on Saturday to visit the Army base.
According to NYT, the Taliban released the names and a picture of 10 men who they said had taken part in the assault. All were dressed in Afghan military uniforms, down to helmets and kneepads. A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the assailants had been led by four soldiers in the base who had long been working for the militants.
The attack came weeks after militants entered the Afghan Army’s main hospital in Kabul, the capital, and killed more than 50 people in a siege that lasted nearly seven hours.