NATO soldier killed in Afghan multiple suicide attack

Taliban militants killed one NATO soldier in a multiple suicide attack involving a car bomb, explosive vests and gunfire against a base in southern Afghanistan on Monday, NATO officials said.

Afghan officials said the attack targeted a U.S. facility in Zhary district of Kandahar province, a flashpoint region of the Islamist insurgency against NATO forces and the Kabul government.

“One ISAF member has been killed in this attack,” a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told AFP.

“There were multiple individuals. All the enemy have been killed. It was a complex attack against an ISAF base involving a suicide car bombing, suicide vests and small arms fire.”

Javid Faisal, spokesman for the Kandahar provincial government, said on his Twitter account that nine suicide bombers and attackers were killed in the attack on the U.S. base in Zhary.

NATO combat forces are withdrawing from Afghanistan this year after more than a decade of fighting the Taliban, but negotiations have stalled over a deal to allow some U.S. and NATO troops to stay after 2014.

About 57,000 ISAF troops remain in Afghanistan, 38,000 of them from the United States. The number has fallen dramatically since June when the ISAF force numbered nearly 100,000.