WASHINGTON: Heavily armed insurgents attacked a British air base in southern Afghanistan Friday, killing two U.S. Marines and wounding several other troops, U.S. officials said.
Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, is stationed at the base on a four-month combat tour. There was no immediate word on his whereabouts at the time of the attack.
U.S. officials said the attack at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan’s Helmand province involved a range of insurgent weaponry, possibly including mortars, rockets or rocket-propelled grenades, as well as small arms fire.
Lt. Col. Stewart Upton, a spokesman at Camp Leatherneck, a U.S. Marine base adjacent to the air base, confirmed the attack and said two coalition service members had been killed but he did not specify their nationalities.
Upton said coalition forces were assessing the extent of the damage and would provide more details later.
Camp Bastion is a British air base and is used by the Marines at Leatherneck. A number of aircraft at the base also were hit by insurgent fire, another U.S. official said.
Capt. Harry Wales, as the prince is known in the military, is serving a four-month combat deployment as a gunner on an Apache helicopter. Harry, who turns 28 today, is expected to start flying Apache missions this week. This is his second tour in Afghanistan.
It also was not clear Friday whether the attack was connected at all to the protests and violence across the Muslim world this week that has been linked to an anti-Islamic film. Afghanistan’s southern region has been a hotbed of the insurgency and frequent attacks.
Earlier Friday, a bus and truck collided and burst into flames in eastern Afghanistan killing at least 51 people.
The collision occurred in Ghazni province on a highway that links the Afghan capital of Kabul with Kandahar, the largest city in the south. At least 51 of the 56 passengers on the bus were killed, said Gen. Zarawar Zahid, the provincial police chief.
He said Afghan police and soldiers were still removing those killed from the wreckage along Highway 1 in Ab Band district. The fate of the two drivers was not immediately known.
Zahid said the cause of the crash has not yet been determined but he ruled out the possibility of an attack.
Separately, the U.S.-led military coalition said a NATO service member was killed Thursday during an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. No other details were released about the death.
