US general killed in Kabul attack: Pentagon

The Pentagon has confirmed that a US general was killed in an attack in Afghanistan – the highest-ranking American fatality since the 9/11 attacks. The US Defense Department also identified the assailant, who was wearing a uniform, as an Afghan soldier and said that he was killed after he opened fire on coalition forces, his supposed allies. ‘I can... confirm among the casualties was an American general who was killed,’ the Pentagon spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby, told reporters in Washington on Tuesday. The general was the highest-ranking US officer killed since the September 11, 2001, attacks when Lieutenant General Timothy Joseph Maude was killed by a hijacked airliner that crashed into the Pentagon. No US general has been killed in combat since the Vietnam War, with top-ranking service members spared during the Iraq war and, until now, the Afghanistan conflict. Kirby said that "up to 15" people were injured in the attack but said that they were not all Americans. Separately, the German army said that one of its generals was wounded, according to AFP.