7 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan

Seven Nato troops have been killed in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province since Thursday, it was revealed on Friday. The dead include six US Marines, an American aid worker and a British soldier. An Afghan police commander and several of his men killed three US soldiers in the southern province of Helmand, turning guns on them after inviting them to a dinner to discuss security, Afghan officials said on Friday. The American special forces members were killed in the Sarwan Qala area, in what appeared to be a planned attack by rogue Afghan forces, they said. “During dinner, the police commander and his colleagues shot them and then fled. The commander was Afghan National Police in charge of local police in Sangin (district),” a senior Afghan official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Three US soldiers and an American aid worker were killed earlier on Thursday in the eastern province of Kunar in an attack by a suicide bomber. Also on Friday, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in London that a British soldier has been killed while on patrol in southern Afghanistan. The soldier, from 3rd Battalion, The Rifles, died of injuries sustained from “enemy action” during a patrol in the Nad-e-Ali district of Helmand, a statement said. A US Defence Department official confirmed the death of the Americans on Friday. Elsewhere in Helmand, a vehicle struck a roadside mine, killing six civilians and wounding five others, President Hamid Karzai’s office said. Women and children were among the casualties in the bombing, which Karzai condemned. The attack on Americans was the third on coalition forces by their Afghan counterparts in a week. In the strikes known as “green-on-blue” attacks, Afghan security forces or militants dressed as local police or soldiers target coalition troops. Thirty coalition service members have now died this year at the hands of Afghan forces or insurgents disguised in Afghan uniforms, according to an Associated Press tally - a dramatic rise from previous years. The assaults have cast a shadow of mistrust over US efforts to train Afghan soldiers and police more than 10 years after the US-led invasion to topple the Taliban’s regime for sheltering the Al Qaeda leadership.