KABUL, Afghanistan — Two U.S. service members were killed and six other Americans were wounded Sunday in an early morning rocket attack at sprawling Bagram Air Field.
Military authorities said at least three rockets slammed into the base about 2 a.m., in a rare instance of an insurgent attack inflicting casualties inside the heavily fortified compound. It was the third rocket or mortar attack to penetrate the base since January.
The wounded, four service members and two civilians, were treated at a medical facility on the base, which is the size of a small city.
Located along the fertile Shomali plain about 25 miles north of Kabul, the base and airfield are surrounded by farmland, desert and towering mountains.
The three rockets hit separate areas of the base, and another exploded outside the security barrier, a military spokesman said. A police official in Bagram district, which surrounds the base, said he had heard no reports of Afghan civilian deaths or injuries.
The attack brought the U.S. death toll in Afghanistan this year to at least 80, according to an Associated Press count.
The attack came just hours after military spokesmen on Saturday announced three other U.S. combat deaths: two National Guard troops killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar on Friday and a soldier killed by insurgents in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday.
The Soviet-era Bagram base, which includes an airfield with several runways, is busy 24 hours a day. Thousands of U.S. and NATO soldiers, along with thousands of civilian contractors from several nations, can be seen walking the streets, shopping and eating at fast-food outlets and an all-night coffee shop.
The Afghan residential areas around the base are relatively secure.
In February 2007, 23 people died in a suicide bomb attack outside the base while then-Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack and for the rocket attack Sunday.
