KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Afghan soldier who killed a U.S. two-star general and wounded other high-ranking officers hid in a bathroom with a NATO rifle before the attack, an Afghan military official said Wednesday.
The investigation into the killing of Maj. Gen. Harold Greene, the highest-ranked U.S. officer to be slain in combat since 1970 in the Vietnam War, focused on the Afghan soldier, who went by the name Rafiqullah, the official said. About 15 people were wounded in the attack, including a German general and two Afghan generals, before Rafiqullah was killed, the official said.
However, Rafiqullah's motive for the attack remained unclear Wednesday as American officials prepared to fly Greene's body back to the U.S. A similar attack saw an Afghan police officer purportedly drug and kill seven of his colleagues, authorities said.
Rafiqullah, in his early 20s, joined the Afghan army more than two years ago, the Afghan official said. On Tuesday, Rafiqullah had just returned from a patrol around Camp Qargha, west of the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The official said others on patrol with Rafiqullah turned in their NATO-issued assault rifles, but Rafiqullah kept his and hid in a bathroom. Rafiqullah opened fire when the generals walked into view, the official said.
The Afghan official spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to release the information. A second Afghan military official corroborated his account.
About half of the wounded in Tuesday's attack at Marshal Fahim National Defense University were Americans, several of them reported to be in serious condition. However, there was no indication that Greene was specifically targeted.
Rafiqullah was from a district in Paktia province known to harbor fighters from the Haqqani network, which has strong links to the Taliban and conducts attacks against U.S. forces. There also were indications that Rafiqullah had a dispute with his superiors before the shooting and opened fire because of it, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information not yet made public.
In a statement, NATO said Greene's body was being prepared Wednesday to be flown to the U.S. via Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with Maj. Gen. Greene's family, and the families of our soldiers who were injured," NATO said. "These soldiers were professionals, committed to the mission."
The German Defense Ministry identified its wounded officer Wednesday as Brig. Gen. Michael Bartscher, saying he was in stable condition at Bagram airfield and that authorities were considering taking him back to Germany.
The attack wasn't the only one by an Afghan ally on coalition forces Tuesday. In Paktia province, an Afghan police guard exchanged fire with NATO troops near the governor's office, provincial police said. The guard was killed in the gunfight.
A third so-called insider attack happened late Tuesday in the Uruzgan provincial capital of Tirin Kot, where an Afghan police officer killed seven of his colleagues at a checkpoint, then stole their weapons and fled in a police car, provincial spokesman Doost Mohammad Nayab said.
A doctor at a local hospital said it appeared the police officer drugged his colleagues before the shooting. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to release the information. Nayab later denied that the police officers had been drugged and said the officer involved had Taliban connections, without elaborating.
Gulab Khan, the Uruzgan provincial head of criminal investigations, said the killing of Afghan forces by their colleagues is an increasingly urgent problem as the U.S.-led foreign forces prepare to wind down their presence in the country, leaving the Afghan government to fight the insurgents on its own.
"If we have local police who are easily switching to the Taliban, soon the aftermath will be grave and will pose a big threat to the Afghan government," he said.
Insider attacks in Afghanistan rose sharply in 2012, with more than 60 coalition troops -- mostly Americans -- killed in 40-plus attacks that threatened to shatter all trust between Afghan and allied forces. But instances of Afghan security forces turning their weapons on advisers in the U.S.-led coalition have declined sharply in the past year, with new practices instituted to protect soldiers.
Killings of Afghan soldiers and officers by their Afghan colleagues, however, are more common. Exact casualty figures for Afghan security forces are difficult to ascertain. Neither the Ministry of Defense nor the Ministry of Interior, which oversee the army and the police, publicly release the data.
Information for this article was contributed by Amir Shah, Robert Burns, Lolita C. Baldor, Mirwais Khan, Kirsten Grieshaber, Jon Gambrell and Rahim Faiez of The Associated Press; and by Azam Ahmed, Ahmad Shakib and Taimoor Shah of The New York Times.
A Section on 08/07/2014