NATO Staff Evacuated After Two Americans Assassinated in Kabul
Violence and rioting in response to reports that NATO forces had confiscated and burned prisoners' Korans continues for a fifth straight day in Kabul: Today, two American advisers, a colonel and a major, were killed by a single gunman who had penetrated a high-security government compound. The officers were "found dead in their office from gunshot wounds to the head," CNN reports. The shooter, who according to a NATO spokesman was "not Western," is still at large.
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The Taliban again claimed responsibility for the attack:
"The attacker is still alive and resisting and a second Mujahid managed to escape the ministry," [Taliban spokesman] Zabiullah Mujahid said in an email. "This comes amid our call to all Afghan security forces to turn their guns towards the invading forces who are the real enemies of our country and religion and kill them so they leave our country."
The killings, which come despite Barack Obama's criticized apology to Hamid Karzai, brings the death toll to 15. General John Allen, commander of NATO and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, has announced that all NATO personnel are being recalled from Afghan ministries, for "obvious force protection reasons."
