Washington, Aug. 24 (ANI): The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said that the Taliban is responsible for a greater share of 'insider attacks' on U.S. troops than earlier believed.
U.S. General John Allen said that about 25 percent of all so-called 'green-on-blue' attacks were the result of the Taliban infiltrating into Afghan forces.
Allen's claims come days after the Pentagon said that an internal review has shown only about 10 percent of all insider assaults could be attributed to the insurgency.
"We think it's about 25%," news 24 quoted Allen, as saying.
According to the report, Allen said that the Islamist insurgency was anxious to exploit the incidents for propaganda purposes.
"The Taliban try to take credit for every one of these attacks, whether it's a personal grievance or whether it's a successful infiltration," he said.
Allen said that the attacks were caused by a number of factors, including not just Taliban infiltration but "disagreements, animosity which may have grown between the individual shooter and our forces in general, or a particular grievance".
Afghan officials said that 'infiltration by foreign spy agencies' into the ranks of Afghan government forces was to be blamed for the rise in attacks by Afghan soldiers.
Allen said that the Afghan Government, however, had not yet shared any information with NATO that proved foreign spies were supposedly behind the incidents.
"I'm looking forward to Afghanistan providing us with the intelligence that permits them to come to that conclusion so that we can understand how they've drawn that conclusion and we could add that into our analysis," Allen said.
The death toll of US troops from insider attacks this year has reached 40. (ANI)
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