An Afghan soldier opened fire on a group of German soldiers today after they returned from patrol to their base in northern Afghanistan. The soldier was slain, but not before he killed three German soldiers and wounded another six.

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodur zu Guttenberg

The attack was the first such incident near the base in nearly a year, following an April, 2010 attack by German soldiers against Afghan troops which killed at least six of them. The German troops defended that attack, claiming they thought the Afghan soldiers were “civilians.”

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who is in the midst of a scandal related to plagarizing his doctoral thesis, shrugged off today’s killings, saying that the partnership with the Afghan Army was “successful” and that questioning it because of the killings that crop up once in awhile “would only serve our enemies.”

The deaths will likely add another flurry of calls to withdraw from the war in Germany, where voters were assured by the government that Afghanistan wasn’t technically a war for years before the death toll started rising and Guttenberg conceded it was “warlike.” Germany’s constitution forbids them explicitly from offensive wars like the occupation of Afghanistan.

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