At Least Eight Americans Killed in Afghan Bombing

Suicide Attacker Hit Military Base Gym

by Jason Ditz, December 30, 2009

This article is out-of-date but left up for reference purposes. Officials have since admitted that the eight “civilians” were CIA agents and the “gym” was a CIA building.

A suicide bomber managed to sneak onto a NATO military base in Khost Province today and managed to detonate in the base’s gym, killing at least eight Americans, all of them identified as civilians by the US military.

Several others were wounded in the attack on Forward Operating Base Chapman, near the Khost capital district in the restive Khost province. The attacker was said to be wearing the explosives as a vest.

Though so far no group has claimed credit for the attack, officials say it is almost certainly the work of the Haqqani network, which operates just across the border from Khost in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency.

If this proves accurate the attack was probably in revenge for the repeated US drone strikes against Haqqani network targets over the past several weeks, as it tries to convince the Pakistani government to invade North Waziristan and combat the group. Pakistan is already committing 200,000 troops to fighting targets along the Afghan border, and insists it can’t commit to the North Waziristan raids until after it finishes the South Waziristan raids the US had been demanding.

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