KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan employed by the U.S. government killed one American and wounded another in an attack on a CIA office in Kabul, officials said Monday.
The shooting Sunday evening is the most recent in a growing number of attacks this year by Afghans working with the country’s international allies. Some assailants have turned out to be Taliban sleeper agents; others have been motivated by personal grievances.
Gunfire was first heard after 8 p.m. local time around the former Ariana Hotel, a building that former U.S. intelligence officials said is the CIA station in Kabul. The spy agency occupied the heavily secured building just blocks from the Afghan presidential palace in late 2001 after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban, which sheltered Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorist network.
The U.S. Embassy said an Afghan employee of the complex fatally shot an American citizen and wounded another before being killed.
“The motivation for the attack is still under investigation,” the embassy said in a statement.
Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall declined to comment on what the targeted annex was used for, citing security reasons. Mr. Sundwall said the Afghan employee was not authorized to carry a weapon, and it was not clear how the man was able to get a gun into the secured compound.
The embassy did not provide information on the American who was killed. It said the person wounded in the shooting was taken to a military hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.
The attack came less than two weeks after militants fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles at the U.S. Embassy, NATO headquarters and other buildings in Kabul, killing seven Afghans.
No embassy or NATO staff members were hurt in the 20-hour assault.
However, it plunged U.S.-Pakistan relations to new lows, as U.S. officials accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency of supporting terrorists in planning and executing the Sept. 13 attack.
Sunday’s assault also follows closely on last week’s assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading a government effort to broker peace with the Taliban.
A government spokesman said that the man who brought the suicide bomber to Kabul has been arrested.
Meanwhile, political tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan continued to mount Monday as the Afghan Foreign Ministry warned Pakistan that continuing artillery attacks in eastern Afghanistan will harm relations between the countries.
The Afghan government has said that an unknown number of Afghan civilians have been killed by the shelling coming from Pakistani territory in recent days.
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