Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)
BY CHRIS LONG
ANCHOR ZACH TOOMBS
It’s the deadliest in a series of attacks
on Afghan police. Seventeen officers are dead after being drugged, shot and killed at close
range in their sleep by fellow officers in southeastern Afghanistan.
“Police have
launched an investigation and have detained two men who they say poised the people at
the checkpoint.” (Video Source: Al Jazeera)
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack
in an email that says, “Locals in the area were tired of the atrocities and crimes of
these [irregular militias]...oppression has been weakened and decreased in the area.”
There
are differing reports on who exactly the 17 murdered were. The New York Times reports
they were police officers or in training... but The BBC says 11 were police officers and
six were visiting someone at the base in Ghazni (Hahz-NE). The BBC also noted officials suspect
it was an inside job.
The Afghan Police have been suspected of corruption in the past.
Investigators are still trying to determine how the militants got inside where the policemen
were sleeping. (VIdeo Source: CNN)
The United States supports and trains the Afghan
Local Police, a group whose goal is to bring security to remote areas in Afghanistan … But
President Karzai has expressed concern it will end up arming criminals.
A writer
for Foreign Policy reports NATO originally announced that enemy initiated attacks in
Afghanistan had dropped last year... but now they’re recanting that statement because
the research was based on incorrect numbers. This means, “The U.S.-led coalition had
touted the drop as a sign that the Taliban was weakening, but the corrected report shows
that insurgent attacks stayed the same over the past two years.”
There were at
least three similar attacks the Taliban took credit for in December 2012, which resulted
in 17 deaths of local forces. Two guards from the site of the most recent attack are being
questioned about why they failed to stop the attack.