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American Major General Reportedly Fatally Shot in Afghanistan

Highest-ranking member of the American military to die in Afghanistan

Afghanistan National Army soldiers stand guard at Camp Qargha / AP

A United States Army major general was shot and killed at close range on Tuesday by a man dressed as an Afghan soldier at a training academy on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, the New York Times reports.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A United States Army major general was killed on Tuesday by an Afghan soldier, shot at close range at a military training academy on the outskirts of Kabul, an official of the American-led coalition and Afghan media reported Tuesday. The officer was the highest-ranking member of the American military to die in hostilities in the Afghanistan war.

The coalition official, who spoke on condition of anonymity and would not release the name of the major general, said an unspecified number of other service members of the American-led coalition and Afghan soldiers, including a senior Afghan commander were also shot. Their conditions were not known.

Other details of the shooting were sketchy, and the coalition official would only confirm that "an incident" had taken place at the Afghan National Army Officer Academy. [...]

Tuesday’s shooting was the first so-called insider attack in Afghanistan in months. Such attacks, in which Afghan troops open fire on unsuspecting coalition forces, at one point posed a serious challenge to the war effort, sowing distrust and threatening to upend the American-led training mission that is vital to the long-term strategy for keeping the Taliban at bay.