Taliban Bombers Attack USA's Largest Army Base Sparking Hour-Long Battle

A Taliban suicide squad armed with bombs and rockets attacked the largest US military base in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, sparking an hour-long gun battle, officials said.

Photo: Taliban Bombers Attack USA's Largest Army Base Sparking Hour-Long Battle

One foreign soldier and two civilians were wounded in an initial rocket attack on Kandahar airfield, AFP reports.

A spokesman for the Taliban in the south, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, interviewed by cellphone, claimed that the attack was led by seven suicide bombers who managed to breach the perimeter of the base so that a tractor loaded with explosives could enter and explode, while the fighters dispersed around the base. He said 11 foreigners were killed inside, but there was no confirmation of this.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Tuesday, six guards at a branch of the Kabul Bank in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif were killed by robbers who made off with about $300,000, according to Shir Jan Durani, a spokesman for the provincial police chief, according to New York Times.