{"id":5016,"date":"2017-04-22T18:22:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T18:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=5016"},"modified":"2017-04-22T18:22:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T18:22:05","slug":"at-least-140-soldiers-killed-in-deadliest-attack-on-afghan-military-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/at-least-140-soldiers-killed-in-deadliest-attack-on-afghan-military-base\/","title":{"rendered":"At least 140 soldiers killed in deadliest attack on Afghan military base"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least 140 Afghan soldiers killed by Taliban attackers disguised in military uniforms in Afghanistan\u2019s Mazar-i-Sharif<\/strong><\/p>\n

At least 140 Afghan soldiers have been killed after Taliban suicide attackers disguised as army personnel targeted a national army base in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.<\/p>\n

This is the single deadliest known attack on an Afghan military base in the course of the long war.<\/p>\n

Another 160 people were wounded in the attack, Mohammad Ibrahim Khair Andesh, head of the provincial council, announced.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, there was even a shortage of coffins,\u201d said the official, Ibrahim Khairandish, a member of the provincial council in Balkh Province, where the attack occurred.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn continuing with their barbarism and criminality, the Taliban carried out a group attack in the 209th Corps mosque when our soldiers were standing for group prayers,\u201d Gen. Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense said.\u201cThis was against all human and Islamic values.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Ashraf Ghani declared a national day of mourning after scores of soldiers were killed by Taliban fighters disguised as fellow soldiers, in the deadliest attack of its kind on an Afghan military base.<\/p>\n

Ghani held an emergency meeting with senior security officials and called for a “serious” investigation into the attack.<\/p>\n

As many as 10 Taliban fighters, dressed in Afghan army uniforms and driving military vehicles, made their way into the base and opened fire on mostly unarmed soldiers eating and leaving a mosque after Friday prayers, according to officials.<\/p>\n

They used rocket-propelled grenades and rifles, and several detonated suicide vests packed with explosives, officials said.<\/p>\n

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Saturday the attack on the base was retribution for the recent killing of several senior Taliban leaders in northern Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least 140 Afghan soldiers killed by Taliban attackers disguised in military uniforms in Afghanistan\u2019s Mazar-i-Sharif At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[124,1],"tags":[9,137,10,11],"class_list":["post-5016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-news","tag-afghanistan","tag-asia","tag-taliban","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Afghan-soldiers.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-1iU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5018,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5016\/revisions\/5018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}