U.S. Civilian Is Killed at Police Headquarters in Kabul

The American victim was identified as Joseph Griffin, 49, of Mansfield, Ga., who had worked for DynCorp International as a police trainer since July 2011, according to a DynCorp spokeswoman, Ashley Burke.

Afghan officials identified the suspect as a woman named Nargis, a 33-year-old sergeant in the national police force who worked in the Interior Ministry’s legal and gender equality department, and whose husband is also a member of the police force.

A person at Kabul police headquarters, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information, said the attacker had shot the American adviser in the head at close range with a pistol and then was immediately arrested by other Afghan police officers. The person added that both American and Afghan officials were questioning her, and he said she was distraught. The police said they did not believe the attack was related to terrorism and that the suspect had no known connections with insurgents.

The Afghan news station TOLO cited Afghan officials as saying that the woman, who had crossed multiple police checkpoints before she fired her gun, had graduated from the national police academy in 2008, in one of its first female classes.

The effort to recruit and train female police officers has been fraught with difficulty. Eupol, the European police organization active in police training here, says there are only 380 female police officers in Kabul, and even fewer in the provinces, despite a goal by the Interior Ministry of recruiting 5,000 by the end of 2014.

Insider attacks, in which members of the Afghan security services have turned against their foreign allies, have greatly increased in the past year, with 61 American and other coalition members killed, not including the episode on Monday, compared with 35 deaths the previous year, according to NATO figures.

Monday’s attack — the first insider attack known to be committed by a woman — came after a lull in insider shootings after the military instituted a series of precautions meant to reduce them. The most recent episode was on Nov. 11, when a British soldier was killed in Helmand Province.

American and Afghan officials have been struggling to figure out how large a factor Taliban infiltration or coercion has been in such attacks. Although insurgent contact has been clear in some cases, many of the attacks have seemed to come out of personal animosity or outrage, attributed to culture clash or growing Afghan anger at what they see as an unwelcome occupation by the United States and its allies.

“The loss of any team member is tragic, but to have this happen over the holidays makes it seem all the more unfair,” Steven F. Gaffney, the chairman of DynCorp, said in a statement.

The company also released a statement attributed to the victim’s wife, Rennae Griffin. “My husband was a thoughtful, kind, generous and loving man who was selfless in all his actions and deeds,” it said.

In other violence on Monday, a coalition member was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, and an Afghan Local Police commander killed five fellow officers at a checkpoint in Jowzjan Province in the north. Dur Mohammad, the commander at the checkpoint, shot and killed five officers under his command, according to Gen. Abdul Aziz Ghairat, the provincial police chief. He said the commander fled after the shooting. General Ghairat did not offer a motive, but said that Mr. Mohammad had connections with the Taliban in the area.

The Afghan Local Police program, which seeks to bring armed elements — including some former insurgents — into government service, has drawn criticism because of a series of episodes in which the armed elements have switched allegiances, sometimes repeatedly.

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Blast Kills 10 Girls in Eastern Afghanistan; Car Bomber Targets Kabul

In a separate episode, 10 girls were killed in a rural district of eastern Afghanistan on Monday when a roadside bomb exploded while they were collecting firewood, the Afghan police said. The office of the governor of Nangarhar Province said the girls were all between 9 and 11 years old. The Ministry of Education said some were as young as 6.

The Kabul explosion sent a large plume of smoke above the capital on the Jalalabad road, a main thoroughfare leading east out of the city lined with shops, yards and industrial units.

The target was a company called Contrack International, said Gen. Mohammed Dawood Amin, Kabul’s deputy chief of police. Officials said Contrack was a construction maintenance company that provided logistics services for the Afghan Army and police and NATO coalition bases.

“There was a blast, a boom and a wall fell down,” said Roheen Fedai, 19, who said he worked in the company’s call center. Shortly after the blast, he was wandering close to the compound with his hand in a bandage and blood on his face from an eye injury.

The car exploded in a small lane between the company and another compound housing a carton-making factory, blasting down walls and destroying a two-story office.

Barialyia, a security official for Contrack, said the company’s country director was wounded in the explosion. He said five American and South African citizens were among the injured.

Mr. Fedai said Contrack was an American-owned supplier to the Afghan military. Officials here also said the company was American-owned, but the company could not be reached to confirm this or other details about the attack. Its Web site says its headquarters are in McLean, Va., and shows that it has provided services for the United States military in the past.

The compound is close to a NATO base, Camp Phoenix, and other NATO installations. The Taliban claimed responsibility, but a coalition spokesman in Kabul, Lt. Col. Hagen Messer, said that the attack did not affect the NATO bases, and that there were no coalition casualties.

In the blast in eastern Afghanistan, Hazarat Hussain Masharaqiwal, a spokesman for the police chief of Nangarhar Province, said that the children discovered the unexploded bomb near their village, and that it went off when they hit it with an ax. The explosion also wounded a boy who was with them.

The local police said the bomb probably dated from the civil war or even the Soviet occupation of the country.

The United States-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said the explosion was caused by the accidental triggering of an old land mine, quoting the governor of Chaparhar District in Nangarhar Province.

In a statement, Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of American and international forces in Afghanistan, said he was saddened by the girls’ deaths. “Over three decades of conflict, Afghanistan became one of the most heavily mined countries on earth,” he said.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, and Khalid Alokozai from Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.

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