Afghan soldier killed after shooting, wounding 3 US troops

An Afghan soldier opened fire on Sunday inside a base in the southern Helmand province, wounding three US soldiers before being shot dead. Navy Cpt. Bill Salvin, a US military spokesman, said coalition forces had killed the soldier "to end the attack," but Col. Mohammad Rasoul Zazai, an Afghan army spokesman, said the soldier had made a "mistake" and had not fired deliberately. Several US troops have been killed in Afghanistan in recent years in so-called insider attacks carried out by Afghan police or soldiers. In October, an Afghan man in a military uniform shot dead a US soldier and an American civilian contractor inside a military base in Kabul before being killed. Elsewhere in Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents attacked a district headquarters in the Kandahar province using a suicide car bomb, said Samim Khpolwak, a spokesman for the governor. He declined to say how many people were killed or wounded. A security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said six police were killed and five others were wounded in the assault, which was claimed by the Taliban.