Eight CIA Agents, Five Canadians Killed in Separate Attacks in Afghanistan

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Forward Operating Base Chapman that was hit by a suicide attack on Wednesday was used by US spies.

It added US sources confirmed that all the dead and injured were probably CIA employees or contractors.

Earlier, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said eight US civilians and four Afghan soldiers were killed in the attack.

The newspaper cited unidentified US officials as saying that the base, located in the eastern province of Khost near the Afghan border with Pakistan, was being used in part by the CIA.

The bombing appears to have inflicted more casualties on US intelligence personnel than any other attacks since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

In another incident, on late Tuesday, five Canadians were killed in an attack in the southern province of Kandahar just hours after the first attack.

The group, made up of four Canadian soldiers and a journalist accompanying them, were killed when their armored vehicle was hit by a bomb, the Canadian defense ministry said. The deaths rose to 138 the number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

Taliban group spokesman on Thursday claimed that its members carried out these two attacks.

The attacks came as the number of US and NATO-led occupation troops in Afghanistan was set to soar from 113,000 to 150,000.

More than 506 foreign forces were killed in Afghanistan this year, 310 of whom were US troops.