KABUL, Afghanistan — Insurgents using guns and rockets or mortars launched an audacious attack on the largest NATO base in Helmand Province shortly after midnight Saturday morning, killing two service members and wounding several others, according to a spokesman for the international forces here.
The base, Camp Bastion, is where Prince Harry is serving as a member of a British helicopter unit. Prince Harry was not in any danger, said the spokesman, Master Sgt. Bob Barko. It was not clear whether the attack was meant to be an attempt on the prince’s life, Sergeant Barko said. The Taliban have vowed to kill him.
Camp Bastion is home to the largest number of British troops in Afghanistan, while the neighboring Camp Leatherneck is a mainly American base. A spokesman for the international forces said that the military did not yet have details on the exact location of the attack; the two bases house more than 20,000 service members, civilians and contractors from both countries.
Although rocket attacks on both bases occur periodically, the latest one appears to have been far more serious and possibly involved more assailants. Sergeant Barko said that because of the early hour, it was “difficult to know much yet.”
He described the attackers as using “indirect fire,” a term that can mean rockets or mortars as well as small-arms fire.
The insurgents in Helmand, in southern Afghanistan, are overwhelmingly Taliban, but the military in the early stages of its assessment was reluctant to say definitively that Taliban insurgents were behind the attack.
On the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on Tuesday, Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, was quoted by British news organizations as saying the insurgents would do everything in their power to eliminate Prince Harry, 27, who is third in line for the British throne.
“We are using all our strength to get rid of him, either by killing or kidnapping,” Reuters quoted Mr. Mujahid as saying.
In further remarks about the prince that appeared in jihadist media, as translated by SITE, an organization that tracks jihadist groups, Mr. Mujahid urged the British to spend the money used to send Harry to Afghanistan on the poor instead.
“The objective behind his coming is to deceive his people more, and in Afghanistan, to give something of a morale boost to the defeated soldiers of his country so they continue until the date of their fleeing to Britain, which couldn’t do anything despite the presence of thousands of its soldiers,” he said. “So what can it do through one soft prince?”
There have been news reports of internal British government discussions about whether a majority of troops will stay through 2014 or whether there might be an accelerated withdrawal for some of them.
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