Officials are describing it as an “extremely complex” attack, but an overnight Taliban run at a US air base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan appears to have ended in virtual failure, with only a handful of deaths and a few dozen wounded.

Among the dead were three Afghan guards and two civilians. NATO reported no deaths among their own forces on the base, but did confirm “a number” of wounded in the raid.

The Taliban were presenting it as a redux of the Camp Bastion/Camp Leatherneck attack in September, but whereas that attack caught the base defenders unawares, allowing Taliban infiltrators to blow up more than $200 million in aircraft, this time the suicide bombers detonating cars at the front gate were the big “damage” from the strike.

NATO officials insist that none of the Taliban actually managed to get inside the base during the attack. The Taliban claims the contrary, pointing to “heavy casualties” among NATO forces. NATO has refused to say how many of their troops were wounded.

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