Brent Taylor, mayor of North Ogden, Utah, killed in Afghanistan insider attack

A National Guard officer was killed and two U.S. service member was wounded in the latest insider attack against American and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The attack took place Saturday at the expansive Kabul Military Training Center, located on the outskirts of the Afghan capital of Kabul. The attacker, a member of the Afghan military’s elite commando units, “was immediately killed by other Afghan Forces,” coalition officials said in a statement Sunday.

“The two U.S. service members were medically evacuated to Bagram Airfield. The wounded service member is undergoing medical treatment and is in stable condition [and] incident is under investigation,” command officials said in the statement

The statement, issued by officials with Operation Resolute Support — the main U.S. and NATO-led training mission Afghanistan — declined to officially comment where the attack took place or what unit the attacker was attached to. Officials from the country’s Interior Ministry confirmed the attack took place at the training center and the gunman was an Afghan commando.

Command officials also refused to officially identify the National Guard officer, Maj. Brent Taylor, who was killed in the attack. A member of the Utah National Guard and the mayor of North Ogden, Utah, Maj. Taylor was identified on social media as the Guard officer killed on Saturday.

Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney identified Maj. Taylor on Saturday evening, via Twitter posts.

At the time of his death, Maj. Taylor was the first known sitting mayor in Utah history to temporarily step down from elected office, to deploy on a combat operation overseas, state news outlets report.

Maj. Taylor’s death comes less than a month after a brazen insider attack in Kandahar, where the top American commander in southern Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Smiley was wounded and Police Brig. Gen. Abdul Raziq — a longtime American ally in the region since the beginning of the war — was killed.

Gen. Austin Scott, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, was also present during the attack but was unharmed. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Gen. Miller was the target of the strike. Afghan and coalition officials have refuted those claims.

Days after the Kandahar strike, one coalition member was killed and three wounded Monday in an insider attack in western Afghanistan’s Herat province, which sits along the Afghan-Iranian border. The Herat attack being the second insider attack against coalition forces in Afghanistan in less than a week in late October.