Taliban militants pulled off a well-planned complex attack on the Afghan National Security Forces Friday, killing more soldiers in a single day than at any point since the war began in 2001.
The attack involved terrorists dressing up in Afghan Army uniforms and driving onto a military base in a major Afghan city, The New York Times reports. One of the militants, posing as a wounded soldier, even hooked himself up to an IV drip and laid down in the back of a truck to get through seven different checkpoints. Once inside, the militants opened fire on nearly 3,000 soldiers who were just finishing up their Friday prayers and headed to lunch — many of them were unarmed.
Amidst the chaos, another terrorist dropped his weapon and pretended to be an Afghan army officer herding his soldiers to safety. He ushered the soldiers into an enclosed dinning area from which there was no escape before one of his partners opened fire on the group. Some of the assailants wore suicide vests, and it took hours to take them all down with the confusion.
Afghan Minister of Defense Abdullah Habibi resigned in disgrace Monday along with chief of staff of the Afghan armed services, Qadam Shah Shahim.
The attack killed so many people, the base ran out of coffins and came just days before U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis arrived in Afghanistan to asses the U.S. effort. Despite spending billions of dollars training the Afghan Security Forces, they have lost nearly 7,000 troops in the last year alone, the highest death toll since the war began. The U.S. continues to maintain nearly 8,400 troops in Afghanistan, but commanders in charge of the war have indicated they want at least a few thousand more.
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