Kabul Airport Shooting Probe Determines Gunman Acted Alone

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17, 2012 — The Air Force’s inves­ti­ga­tion into an April 27 shoot­ing inci­dent that left eight U.S. air­men and a civil­ian con­trac­tor dead at the Afghan air force head­quar­ters in Kab­ul, Afghanistan, deter­mined that the gun­man act­ed alone.

In addi­tion to the U.S. per­son­nel killed, two Afghans were shot and three oth­er Afghans were injured in the attack. The attack­er — Col. Ahmed Gul of the Afghan air force — was killed dur­ing the incident. 

The Air Force Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions report con­cludes Gul act­ed alone and dis­cuss­es fac­tors that may have played a role in the attack, which took place in the Afghan Com­mand and Con­trol Cen­ter at North Kab­ul Inter­na­tion­al Airport. 

While the inves­ti­ga­tion did not deter­mine a con­clu­sive motive for the killing, the report says, the attack appeared to be pre­med­i­tat­ed, and wit­ness state­ments indi­cat­ed Gul may have had per­son­al issues that may have been com­pound­ed by finan­cial problems. 

The OSI find­ings do not sup­port media reports short­ly after the inci­dent that an argu­ment may have occurred ear­li­er that day between the shoot­er and the Amer­i­can ser­vice mem­bers or reports that the gun­man dis­armed and method­i­cal­ly killed the airmen. 

Since the inci­dent, sev­er­al secu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives have been imple­ment­ed to improve the force-pro­tec­tion pos­ture for the coali­tion advis­ers, Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force offi­cials said. 

Extra per­son­nel have been assigned to the force-pro­tec­tion mis­sion, and air advi­sors have received addi­tion­al “active shoot­er” train­ing, offi­cials said, increas­ing the like­li­hood a shoot­er can be neu­tral­ized safe­ly before attack­ing addi­tion­al vic­tims. Also, they added, intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance capa­bil­i­ties have improved, com­mand and con­trol upgrades have been ini­ti­at­ed, and sev­er­al emer­gency response vehi­cles have been purchased. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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