Human bomb hits Afghanistan CIA base

Washington Post:

A suicide bomber blew himself up Wednesday inside an Afghan military base used by the CIA, 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, U.S. officials said.

The bomber managed to slip past security at Forward Operating Base Chapman in the eastern province of Khost before detonating an explosive belt in what one U.S. official described as a room used as a fitness center. The blast also wounded eight people, several of them seriously, U.S. government officials said.

It was not immediately clear how the assailant was able to infiltrate the U.S.-run post, which serves as an operations and surveillance center for the CIA near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. U.S. sources confirmed that all the dead and injured were civilians, adding that most of them were probably CIA employees or contractors. At least one Afghan civilian was also killed, the sources said.

While many details remain uncertain, the attack appears to have killed more U.S. intelligence personnel than have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan began in late 2001. The CIA has previously acknowledged the deaths of four officers in fighting in Afghanistan in the past eight years.

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We need to find how the bad guys were able to get through the base's force protection and explode around such a large group of men. I suspect that there is interrogation of the base security already underway. I would not be surprised if it was in the hands of Afghans some of whom were compromised. It is a loss for teh CIA. Hopefully they have replacements that can be inserted.