Taliban attack claims rare American casualty
WASHINGTON — The attack on a NATO base in Kabul that killed an Army Green Beret marked only the second combat death of a U.S. servicemember in Afghanistan this year. The other occurred in April.
The Pentagon on Sunday identified the soldier as Master Sgt. Peter McKenna Jr., 35, of Bristol, R.I. He died Saturday in Kabul after militants attacked Camp Integrity, near the airport. McKenna was assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group, which specializes in training local forces. In April, an attack claimed the life of a soldier near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan.
Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Sunday that he had met McKenna and last saw him at a Fourth of July ceremony in Rhode Island. Reed recalled McKenna as a "wonderful man" and an "extremely competent" Green Beret who had qualified for Special Forces as a communications specialist and worked his way up the ranks.
"He was a soldier's soldier," Reed said.
The Pentagon's casualty releases, a tragic staple of news when the wars raged in Iraq and Afghanistan, have diminished greatly. Four other troops have died while deployed this year throughout the Middle East, although the military attributed their deaths to "non-combat" causes. At least 35 U.S. troops have been wounded in Afghanistan this year.
The attack Friday on Camp Integrity also killed eight Afghan contractors and wounded several other U.S. troops and contractors, Col. Brian Tribus, a military spokesman in Kabul, said in a statement. Four insurgents were killed and the camp was secured.
About 9,800 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, down from a peak of about 100,000 in 2010. Their official "combat mission" ended last year, but a portion of those who remain conduct counterterrorism operations. The rest train and advise Afghan forces who have been battling the stubborn Taliban insurgency. All but about 1,000 U.S. troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan when President Obama's term ends in 2017.
Reed, who spoke recently with Army Gen. John Campbell, the top commander in Afghanistan, said progress has been made in training Afghan security forces but the country remains violent.
"It is still a very dangerous place," Reed said.
Civilians bore the worst of the recent attacks in Kabul, with 40 killed and 300 wounded in a series of assaults on Friday. The United Nations called it the bloodiest day for civilians since it began tracking violence against them in 2009.
Through Aug. 7, the United Nations recorded 282 civilian deaths and 1,241 more wounded in suicide bombings and other attacks. That is nearly double the number for the same period in 2014, according to the UN.
"The Afghan people are resilient, but the suffering caused by these tactics in terms of civilian deaths, injuries, and the loss of family members, is extreme, irreversible and unjustifiable in any terms," Nicholas Haysom, head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, said in a statement.