Insurgents have launched a rare ground assault against NATO's main military base in southern Afghanistan, wounding several international service members in the second such attack on a major military installation this week.
A Canadian Press news agency report from the base said artillery and machine gunfire reverberated through the area, about 500km southwest of Kabul, several hours after the attack began on Saturday.
No-one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack - the third major assault on NATO forces in Afghanistan in six days - but the Kandahar area is a Taliban stronghold.
Latest in strong of attacks
On Tuesday, a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy in the capital, killing 18 people including six NATO service members - five Americans and a Canadian.
News that makes sense
Your trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you. Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox.
The next day, dozens of Taliban militants attacked the main US military base - Bagram Air Field - killing an American contractor in fighting that lasted more than eight hours.
Rockets started hitting Kandahar Air Field about 8pm local time on Saturday, followed quickly by a ground assault, said Navy Commander Amanda Peperseim, a spokeswoman for NATO forces at the base. She said the attack was still ongoing, and did not provide further details.
She said at least five rockets struck the base, wounding a number of service members, as militants tried unsuccessfully to breach the defence perimeter on the northern side. There were no reports of deaths and she did not have the precise number of wounded.
Peperseim did not know how many insurgents launched the attack but said they did not appear to be wearing suicide vests, as had many of those who stormed the Bagram Air Field north of Kabul on Wednesday. In addition to the US contractor's death, 16 militants were killed and five attackers were captured in the Bagram assault.
Rocket attacks against the Kandahar base, located about 16km south of Kandahar city, are not uncommon. But ground assaults against such large facilities as Kandahar and Bagram are rare, and two attacks in the same week show that the militants are capable of complex operations despite NATO military pressure.
Taliban announced spring offensive
The attacks came soon after the Taliban announced a spring offensive against NATO forces and Afghan government troops - their response to a promise by the Obama administration to squeeze the Taliban out of their strongholds in southern Kandahar province.
Kandahar Air Field is the launching pad for thousands of additional US forces pouring into the country for a summer surge against the Taliban.
Attacks in the south earlier on Saturday killed three NATO service members - one American, one French and one Dutch - and an Afghan interpreter. That brought to 996 the number of US service members who have died since the war began in October 2001, according to an Associated Press count. The Dutch death toll in Afghanistan now is 24 and the French toll is 42.
Base inhabitants warned of attack
A loudspeaker announcement at the Kandahar base said the ground attack was coming from the north, said Maura Axelrod, a reporter with HDNet who was inside the base. She said she could hear heavy outgoing fire and that commanders had come into the bunker where she had taken cover to order all Marines with weapons to help in establishing a security perimeter.
An Afghan named Najibullah who works with a private security company on the base said he heard rockets hitting for about half an hour. He only gave one name.
NATO's current push is aimed at winning over the population in Taliban-friendly areas by establishing security and bolstering the local government. However, each military strike has created potential for backlash amid arguments about who is truly an insurgent.
In the latest such incident, at least a dozen people were killed south of the capital on Saturday after US troops spotted two insurgents trying to plant bombs, an Afghan official said.
The two were shot dead in Paktia province, district chief Gulab Shah said. Troops saw comrades drag the two bodies away and called in a helicopter gunship which killed 10 more people, who US officials said were all militants, Shah said.
Shah said Afghan authorities will investigate to make sure the dead were all insurgents.
Civilian deaths are a flashpoint issue in Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai has urged NATO to take all necessary measures to protect civilian lives.
More than eight years into the war in Afghanistan, international support is also weakening.
The defence minister of Britain's new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government met with Karzai in Kabul on Saturday and said he hopes to speed the withdrawal of British troops.
Defence Secretary Liam Fox is quoted in Saturday's edition of The Times newspaper as saying he "would like the forces to come back as soon as possible", and wants to see if it is possible to speed the training of Afghan troops.
