Indian Military

KABUL: A man wearing Afghan police uniform killed six NATO troops during a training session in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, the latest in a series of similar shootings announced by the US-led military.

"An individual in an Afghan border police uniform turned his weapon against International Security Assistance Forces during a training mission today, killing six servicemembers in eastern Afghanistan," ISAF said.

The man was also killed in the incident and a joint Afghan-NATO team is investigating, the military announced in a short statement.

ISAF did not reveal the casualties' nationalities, in line with its policy, but Americans make up most of the foreign troops based in eastern Afghanistan, one of the worst flashpoints in the nine-year Taliban insurgency.

The deaths brings the toll coalition forces lost this year to 668, according to an AFP tally based on that tracked by the independent icasualties.org website, the highest annual toll since the US-led invasion in late 2001.

Last year 521 NATO soldiers died.

The United States is bankrolling a massive programme -- $9.2 billion in fiscal 2010 -- to build Afghanistan's army and police so they can take over responsibility for security by 2014, as pledged by NATO in Lisbon a week ago.

But the programme has been troubled by a series of shootings, either by insurgents dressed in Afghan security uniforms or rogue officers.

This month, NATO said it was investigating whether an Afghan soldier killed two coalition troops on a military base in the volatile town of Sangin in southern Helmand province.

NATO troops share bases with Afghan soldiers and police, leaving coalition forces vulnerable to attacks by infiltrators.

In July, an Afghan soldier killed two American contractors inside a military base in north Afghanistan.

A week later, another Afghan solider killed three British Gurkha soldiers.

In 2009, five British soldiers were killed by an Afghan policeman.

Police are seen as central to the goal of getting Afghans to take the lead in the fight against the Taliban, who were ousted by the US-led invasion in late 2001 but who wage an increasingly deadly guerrilla war.

There are currently about 80,000 police officers and US and NATO forces hope to bring that number up to 134,000 by October next year, alongside the 170,000 personnel planned for the army by the same date.

On Sunday, leading think tank the International Crisis Group (ICG) issued a damning review of the war and said Afghan security forces "have proven a poor match for the Taliban".

The ICG said the police were "corrupt, brutal and predatory", the army was being manipulated by various strongmen, while both forces suffered from a lack of training and low retention among the ranks.