Deadly insider attack on high-level meeting with top US commander in Afghanistan leaves two Americans wounded, senior Afghan official dead

REUTERS/Mustafa Andaleb

An Afghan policeman keeps watch at a check point in Ghazni city, Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller escaped unhurt after a burst of gunfire in the governor's compound in Kandahar province on Thursday but the powerful police chief General Abdul Razeq was killed, officials said.

A senior security official said the governor's bodyguard opened fire and hit Razeq in the back as soon as officials came out of the meeting. The governor and the local head of the NDS intelligence service were wounded. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that the governor and the intelligence chief were also killed in the attack.

Thursday's incident marks the third apparent insider attack this year. Two previous attacks in September and July killed two American servicemembers.

Several Afghan and international security officials said Razeq, one of Afghanistan's most powerful commanders with a fearsome reputation as an enemy of the Taliban, had been killed.

Miller, who had been attending a meeting with security officials ahead of parliamentary elections on Saturday, was not injured but two Americans were wounded in the crossfire and had been evacuated, NATO spokesman Colonel Knut Peters said.

"Provincial officials including the governor, the police chief and other officials were accompanying the foreign guests to the plane when the gunshots happened," said Said Jan Khakrezwal, the head of the provincial council.

(Reporting by Ismail Sameem and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL; Editing by Robert Birsel)