NATO and Afghan forces killed 14 insurgents during a rebel attack on a foreign military base in the eastern city of Khost on Friday, the coalition said, in one of the heaviest rebel tolls in a single incident in weeks.
Several insurgents, including some wearing suicide vests, attacked the base with rocket propelled grenades. "As of now, we have reports of 14 insurgents killed," a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said.
He said the attack on the forward operating base had been foiled, although he was not in a position to provide operational details.
There were no casualties among either NATO or Afghan forces.
Early reports were that there was a huge explosion at the perimeter that killed a number of civilians when the explosion collapsed a wall--it wasn't clear if the civilians were in the base or nearby outside of the base.
With security that starts with a well-defended perimeter with cameras and other sensors watching the ground around a base and extending outward with small unit patrols and persistent aerial surveillance that can call down precise firepower from loitering planes, drones, or tube or rocket artillery, the enemy can't seem to mount any attacks that overwhelm the defenders for a high friendly body count complete with enemy video of their guys dancing over our corpses.
Oh, the enemy tries, and there have been some epic battles where isolated platoons or companies have held out in smaller combat outposts without the full defenses of a FOB against very determined attacks.
But the enemy keeps failing even in those attacks. Whether or not the individual Taliban carry suicide explosive vests, participating at all on these attacks on our figurative death stars is suicidal. There just isn't a vulnerable exhaust port. The Taliban aren't going to take a FOB with one of these attacks. At best they might penetrate and leave some smoking hulks on an airfield before all dying and make it a good media operation. Why the enemy even bothers attacking the FOBs is a mystery.
Hopefully we are hunting any of the survivors who made there escape--assuming we didn't get them all during their attack.
