Kabul: The US military has confirmed the death of an American service member in eastern Afghanistan, bringing the number of American troops dead in Afghanistan in the long-running conflict to 2,000.
The international coalition in Afghanistan said earlier on Sunday that one of its service members was killed in a suspected insider attack by Afghan forces on Saturday. A US official said that the dead service member was American. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the nationality of the dead had not yet been formally announced.
The number of American dead reflects an Associated Press count of those members of the armed services killed inside Afghanistan since the US-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2001.
Earlier it was reported that a member of Nato’s Afghan force and a civilian contractor were killed in the latest so-called insider attack by a member of the Afghan security forces.
The attack in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday came after the United States said joint operations with Afghan forces were returning to normal.
Joint operations were halted two weeks ago after a surge of attacks by Afghan allies. At least 52 members of the Nato force have been killed this year in so-called green-on-blue attacks.
It was too early to say what impact the latest incident would have on plans to restore joint-operations with Afghan forces to normal, a spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said.