Worst single-day
casualty toll Since Beirut
Joby Warrick in
today’s issue of the Washington Post writes about a suicide attack that killed
8 American civilians in Afghanistan (Suicide
bomber attacks CIA base in Afghanistan, killing at least 8 Americans
| WaPo | December 31, 2009). Quick excerpts below:
A suicide bomber
infiltrated a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan
on Wednesday, killing at least eight Americans in what is believed to be the
deadliest single attack on U.S. intelligence personnel in the eight-year-long
war and one of the deadliest in the agency's history, U.S. officials said.
The attack
represented an audacious blow to intelligence operatives at the vanguard of
U.S. counterterrorism operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan,
killing officials whose job involves plotting strikes against the Taliban, al-Qaeda
and other extremist groups that are active on the frontier between the two
nations. The facility that was targeted -- Forward Operating Base Chapman -- is
in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, which borders North Waziristan, the
Pakistani tribal area that is believed to be al-Qaeda's home base.
[…]
A former senior
agency official said it was the worst single-day casualty toll for the agency
since eight CIA officers were killed in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in
Beirut in April 1983.
