Updated at 8:10 a.m. ET: KABUL, Afghanistan -- Four rockets hit Afghanistan's Bagram airfield, destroying a helicopter belonging to the NATO-led forces and killing three Afghan personnel inside, a spokesman for the coalition said Tuesday.

The attack, which took place at around 10 p.m. local time on Monday (1:30 p.m. ET Monday), came on the eve of the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Security across the capital, Kabul, was intensified.

Two personnel belonging to NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who were also in the helicopter, were wounded, the spokesman said.

The helicopter, which was on a ramp in the airfield when the rockets hit, was destroyed by the ensuing fire, an ISAF official told NBC News.

The Taliban, in a text message to Reuters, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying they had fired rockets at the helicopter, which was on a ramp in the airfield. 

Meanwhile, in the western province of Herat, a suicide attack on a meeting of village elders killed at least seven people and wounded six others, the local police chief’s office told NBC News.

Recent weeks have seen intensified violence across Afghanistan. This week's attacks come days after a young teenager detonated explosives near the heavily barricaded NATO headquarters in Kabul, killing six civilians including children.

That attack followed a suicide bombing of a funeral in eastern Nangarhar province, which killed at least 25.

Despite the presence of hundreds of thousands of Afghan and foreign troops fighting the Taliban-led insurgency, violence is at its worst since the Islamists were toppled by Afghan and U.S. forces in late 2001, five years after they took power.

Politics on the side? US marks 11th anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks

The United Nations says the Taliban are responsible for 80 percent of civilian casualties in the conflict.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Hoshang Hashimi / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

Bagram handover
The Bagram attack came hours after the United States handed control of the controversial giant prison located at at the air base and its 3,000 suspected Taliban inmates to Afghan authorities.

"Today is a historical and glorious day for Afghanistan where Afghans are able to take charge of the prison themselves," acting Defense Minister Enayatullah Nazari told a large crowd, including U.S. military officials, on Monday.

NYT: Potential for a mining boom splits factions in Afghanistan

But in a move that has angered the Afghan government, the United States plans to keep at least one block at the prison, where any suspected Taliban fighters or terrorists captured in future raids will be held before being handed over.

Since the agreement on the handover was signed in March, a further 600 people have been jailed at Bagram. The United States has no time frame on when these new prisoners will be handed over, and how long they plan to keep future captives.

US: Records for $475M in Afghan fuel buys missing

The United States is also keeping another roughly 30 of the original group of detainees, amid concerns that Kabul might process them out instead of keeping them behind bars, as stipulated in the transfer agreement.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday he spoke with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the need to "continue to detain those that are a threat to their country," pursuant to the handover agreement.

9/11 memorial to cost $60 million a year to operate

"I expressed to him that it was important to celebrate this day that we are transferring authority of a large number of prisoners to the Afghan government. It's an important step," he said. "We want to make sure that they in every way abide by the agreements that we work out with them."

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Afghan officials maintain that detention without trial is illegal under Afghan law. Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi, declined to comment on the possibility of detention without trial happening anyway, simply saying: "We are against detainees not being processed by Afghan law."

NBC News' Atia Abawi and Reuters contributed to this report.

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KABUL, Afghanistan -- United States military officials have suspended the training of Afghan Local Police (ALP) in the wake of a deadly series of so-called ‘green on blue’ attacks by Afghan soldiers and police on their international allies.

In a statement late Saturday, Col. Thomas Collins, US Forces Afghanistan spokesperson, said the training has been put on hold in order to carry out intensified vetting procedures on new recruits, and 16,000 existing ALP recruits will be re-vetted.

“While we have full trust and confidence in our Afghan partners, we believe this is a necessary step to validate our vetting process and ensure the quality indicative of Afghan Local Police," he said in the statement.

What's leading Afghan troops to turn on coalition forces?

Many of the 'insider' incidents might have been prevented if existing security measures had been applied correctly, according to the Washington Post which first reported the training suspension.

The newspaper said already-trained recruits would also be re-vetted.

"Current partnered operations have and will continue, even as we temporarily suspend training of about 1,000 new ALP recruits while re-vetting current members," said the statement. “Despite the recent rise in insider attacks, they are relatively rare."

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Hoshang Hashimi / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

Forty-five allied troops have been killed in 34 ‘insider’ attacks this year alone. The Afghan army is implicated in 19 of those attacks, but their training will not be halted.

Last week, an Afghan soldier shot and killed two American soldiers on Monday during a dispute in Laghman province in Afghanistan. 

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Aug 19 to express concern over the issue, urging him to work with U.S. commanders to ensure more rigorous vetting of Afghan recruits. Panetta’s intervention followed the 10th death of a U.S. service member at the hands of Afghan recruit in the space of just two weeks.

ALP training is a U.S. mission, carried out by Special Forces. Training of uniformed police and army personnel is done under the banner of the NATO operation.

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Two U.S. service members were killed in an insurgent attack in Afghanistan on Saturday, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

The attack occurred in the country's eastern Ghazni province, ISAF said, not giving any further details.

ISAF said identification of victims is deferred to the Department of Defense.

In a separate incident early Saturday, two suicide attackers -- one driving a fuel tanker -- blew themselves up near a U.S. base in the eastern Wardak province, killing at least 12 people, officials said.

The violence served as a reminder that even after a decade of fighting, tens of thousands of U.S. and foreign troops are still engaged in a war that shows no signs of slowing down despite the start of a withdrawal of coalition forces.

Seventeen villagers beheaded in southern Afghanistan after 'music party'

The U.S.-led NATO coalition said that no American or coalition troops were killed in the suicide blasts in the town of Sayed Abad, about 40 miles from Kabul. It confirmed that a number of troops were wounded, but did not say how many, in accordance with coalition policy. 

Shahidullah Shadid, a spokesman for the Wardak provincial governor, said one suicide bomber detonated a vest rigged with explosives outside a compound housing the district governor's office as well as local police and Afghan army headquarters. A second bomber driving a fuel tanker detonated his bomb on a road separating the compound from the base.

Shadid said the dead included eight civilians and four Afghan police.

'No one really cares': US deaths in Afghanistan hit 2,000 in 'forgotten' war

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack, which he said was targeting the U.S. base.

Government officials said the first attacker blew himself up to try to eliminate the Afghan security force guarding the compound and clear the way for the truck to hit the base down the road from the governor's complex. The second bomber then blew up the fuel tanker as he was approaching the base. One of the town's main bazaars is also located near the bomb site.

"A small explosion happened followed by a big one caused by a truck," said eyewitness Hamidullah, who like many Afghans goes by one name. "In these explosions a lot of people were wounded and also a large number of shops were destroyed. I fell down on the ground and everything around me was destroyed."

Officials said the second blast was far larger than the first.

"It was a very powerful explosion. It broke windows all over the area," said provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Qayum Bakizai. "Most of the injuries are from broken glass from the windows of homes and shops. It was so powerful we couldn't find much of the truck."

The governor's office said in a statement that 59 people were wounded: two NATO troops, 47 civilians and ten Afghan police officers. 

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Hoshang Hashimi / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

Last year, the same base in Wardak was the target of another suicide bombing. That blast, which occurred on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, wounded 77 American soldiers and killed five Afghans. No U.S. troops were killed when the massive truck bomb exploded outside the base.

The United States and other countries have already begun drawing down their forces in Afghanistan as part of a strategy that aims to hand over security responsibility to the Afghans by the end of 2014, when nearly all foreign troops are set to leave the country. President Barack Obama has pledged to remove 23,000 U.S. troops by the end of September, bringing the number of American forces down to 68,000.

What's leading Afghan troops to turn on coalition forces?

There are currently 129,000 troops serving with the coalition, according to US Maj. Gen. Joseph Reynes Jr., director of operations at the Allied Joint Forces Command in Brunssum, the Netherlands. He said earlier this week that the number will drop to 108,000 by the end of October and dip under 100,000 by the end of the year.

The troops are to be replaced by Afghan army and police units, but many have questioned the effectiveness of an Afghan force that has high desertion rates and is often poorly disciplined. The Afghan security forces are supposed to reach a high of about 350,000 at the end of the year. 

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated at 2 p.m. ET: WASHINGTON – All U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan are to be required to have a fully loaded magazine in their weapons at all times in response to a spike in attacks by rogue members of the Afghan government’s forces.

A senior military official told NBC News that the order "could save precious seconds" in responding to a so-called "green-on-blue" attack and hopefully save lives.

The U.S. military-wide order was issued after six Marines were killed by members of the Afghan forces in two separate attacks last week. Two U.S. service members and an Afghan police officer were also killed Friday by a newly recruited Afghan village police officer, according to officials.

U.S. military officials told NBC News that the new order did not mean personnel were required to keep a round in the chamber.

'Guardian angel' to keep watch
The Army has also ordered that at any gathering of U.S. military and armed Afghan security at least one soldier will be designated as a "guardian angel" to stand in a protected space with his weapon loaded to respond immediately to any threat against his fellow soldiers.

A senior military official told NBC News that while these two measures could provide a rapid response to any attack, the reality was that as long as U.S. forces are working side-by-side with armed Afghans, any one of them "could always get the drop on you."

The attack Friday came just minutes after the village police officer -- identified as Mohammad Ismail, a man in his 30s who had joined the Afghan Local Police just five days ago -- had been given a new weapon as a present by American forces.

He opened fire during an inauguration ceremony attended by American and Afghan national forces in the Kinisk village in the far western province of Farah, provincial police chief Agha Noor Kemtoz told The Associated Press.

"As soon as they gave the weapon to Ismail to begin training, suddenly he took the gun and opened fire toward the U.S. soldiers," Kemtoz said.

"Two U.S. Forces-Afghanistan service members died this morning as a result of an insider threat attack in Farah province, Afghanistan," Col. Hagen Messer, spokesman for the International Joint Command in the country, told NBC News. "Officials are investigating the incident to determine the facts and as more information becomes available it will be released as appropriate."

Details remained sketchy, but an official in the Bala Bolok District told NBC News that an Afghan policeman was also killed in the attack.

Analysis: What's leading Afghan troops to turn against coalition?

Ismail was shot and killed as the coalition and Afghan forces returned fire, the police chief said.

Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the international coalition force, also confirmed that the shooter had been killed.

The Afghan Local Police, which is different from the Afghan National Police, is a village defense force being trained by international forces, including U.S. special forces.

It was not immediately clear to which branch of the U.S. military the dead Americans belonged.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Hoshang Hashimi / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

The killings in the country's far west marked the sixth time in two weeks that a member of the Afghan security forces, or someone wearing their uniform, opened fire on international forces.

28 attacks this year
Such attacks — virtually unheard of just a few years ago — have recently escalated, killing at least 36 foreign troops so far this year and raising questions about the strategy to train national police and soldiers to take over security and fight insurgents after most foreign troops leave the country by the end of 2014.

The NATO-led coalition has said such attacks are anomalies stemming from personal disputes, but the supreme leader of the Taliban boasted on Thursday night that the insurgents are infiltrating the quickly expanding Afghan forces.  

So far in 2012, there have been 28 attacks reported on foreign troops by Afghans they are training, compared to 11 attacks in 2011, according to an Associated Press count, and five attacks in each of the previous two years.

Six such attacks have come in the past two weeks alone, with six American troops killed last Friday in two separate shootings in Helmand province in the south and another American killed a few days previously on a U.S. base in Paktia province in the east.

The trend raises questions about potential resentment by Afghans after more than a decade of international presence and it also renews concern that insurgents may be infiltrating the Afghan army and police, despite intensified screening.

Insurgent infiltration or recruitment was behind only about 10 percent of this year's reported attacks on coalition forces by Afghan allies, Graybeal said earlier this week, citing investigations into attacks before those of the past week.

Graybeal insisted the deadly violence is relatively small scale compared to the nearly 340,000 Afghan security forces now being trained.

The international coalition has said that Afghan forces are increasingly able to lead operations and already have started to assume responsibility for security in areas of the country that are home to 75 percent of the Afghan population.

However, the Taliban have been quick to seize on the increasing number of attacks as a sign of Afghan rejection of foreign forces and the insurgents' own successful recruitment.

Complete World news coverage on NBCNews.com

Message from Omar
The group's supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar said Thursday night that the insurgents "have cleverly infiltrated in the ranks of the enemy" and were successfully killing a rising number of U.S.-led coalition forces.

In an email to media organizations, Omar said the plan to transfer responsibility to Afghan forces by the end of 2014 is a "deceiving drama" that the international community has orchestrated to hide its defeat.

Seven American troops killed in Afghan chopper crash

The Taliban leader's message came the same day that a U.S. military helicopter crashed during a firefight with insurgents in a remote area of southern Afghanistan, killing seven Americans and four Afghans in one of the deadliest air disasters of a war now in its second decade.

The Taliban claimed they gunned down the Black Hawk.

NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski, Courtney Kube, Atia Abawi and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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A U.S. drone attack killed 19 suspected militants on Friday when it fired five missiles at a compound in Pakistan near the Afghan border, Pakistani intelligence officials said Saturday.

The strike was in the Datta Khel region, which is considered to be a stronghold of Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur.

 The attack came just a day after trucks carrying NATO supplies crossed from Pakistan into Afghanistan for the first time in more than seven months. The crossing was allowed after the United States and Pakistan resolved one of their most heated disputes, with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologized for an air attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November.

NATO trucks cross Pakistan border after 7-month closure

The CIA has stepped up drone attacks in North Waziristan in recent weeks in an area seen as a hub for militant groups who attack U.S. forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

Eight people were killed there in a drone strike on Sunday.

For many Pakistanis, 'USA' means 'drones'

In a separate attack, 18 people were killed when armed men attacked a bus in a remote town in Baluchistan province.

The attack took place when the bus, which was travelling to Iran, stopped at a shop in the Kech area, police told Reuters news agency.

This article includes reporting by Reuters.

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Mujeeb Ahmed / NBC News

Trucks at a border checkpoint in Chaman, Pakistan, carry supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan on Thursday, July 5, 2012.

CHAMAN, Pakistan - A pair of trucks carrying NATO supplies crossed into Afghanistan on Thursday, Pakistani customs officials said, the first time in more than seven months that Pakistan has allowed Western nations to use its roads to supply troops in Afghanistan.

Customs officials said the container trucks passed through the Chaman border crossing into southern Afghanistan, a milestone following a deal this week with the United States ending the impasse triggered by the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by U.S. aircraft last November.

"We received orders yesterday to allow NATO supply trucks through, but security officials hadn't received their instructions," said Imran Raza, a customs official.

Pakistan lets trucks roll after Clinton apologizes

"They received their orders today, and now two trucks have crossed the border into Afghanistan."

The resumption of NATO transit into Afghanistan came two days after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, yielding to Pakistani demands, told Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar the United States was sorry for the deaths last November.

Arshad Arbab / EPA

A man reads about Pakistan's agreement to reopen NATO supply at a newspaper stall in Peshawar on Wednesday.

In response to the killing of the soldiers in a border post, a furious Islamabad shut the supply routes.

For months, the Obama administration refused Pakistani demands to offer an apology for what NATO said was a regrettable accident.

Pakistan releases 1st pics of attacked border posts

The closure forced NATO countries to bring supplies into landlocked Afghanistan through an alternate route to the north, a cumbersome process that cost 2 1/2 times as much as shipping them to and then across Pakistan.

Thousands of waiting trucks
In the port city of Karachi, drivers were preparing for the trip. Thousands of trucks and tankers have been stuck at ports in Karachi waiting for the transit ban to be lifted. 

"Today almost after eight months NATO supply has been started. I am taking NATO cargo to Peshawar,  where this cargo will be shifted to trailers taking the same to Kabul," said driver Javed Iqbal. 

Fuel tankers sit idle in Pakistan during dispute with US 

The chairman of Port Qasim, Mohammad Shafi, said Thursday that more than 2,500 NATO containers and vehicles have been held at the facility since the blockade began. 

Getting them back on the road will take time, Shafi said, because of paperwork and customs clearance procedures. 

"Once we do that, we will be able to let the supplies leave for Afghanistan," he said. 

The journey is a perilous one, as the Taliban and other militant groups have threatened to attack supply vehicles in Pakistani territory. Before the closure, hundreds of supply trucks, which travel in convoys, were targeted in different areas of the country. 

US drone kills 8 suspected militants in Pakistan

U.S. officials had expected the first trucks carrying NATO supplies to begin crossing into Afghanistan on Wednesday, but bureaucratic delays held that up. 

The reopening could save the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars, since Pakistan's blockade forced Washington to rely more heavily on a longer, costlier route that leads into Afghanistan through Central Asia. Pakistan is also expected to gain financially, since the U.S. intends to free up $1.1 billion in military aid that has been frozen for the past year. 

But the deal carries risks for both governments. 

Pakistan is facing domestic backlash, given rampant anti-American sentiment in the country and the government's failure to force the U.S. to stop drone strikes targeting militants and accede to other demands made by parliament. 

President Barack Obama, in the midst of a re-election battle, faces criticism from Republicans who are angry his administration apologized to a country allegedly giving safe haven to militants attacking American troops in Afghanistan. 

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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KHOST, Afghanistan -- Three U.S. service members, their Afghan interpreter and 17 Afghan civilians were killed by an apparent suicide bomber on a motorbike in the eastern Afghan city of Khost Wednesday, officials said.

The United States Embassy in Afghanistan issued a statement saying it "strongly condemns this cowardly attack," which is the second on foreign forces in the troubled province this month. 

A U.S. official, speaking anonymously to The Associated Press, said the foreign troops killed were Americans.

However, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said the nationality of the troops would not immediately be confirmed.

A local official told NBC News that women and children were among the civilian casualties in the attack, aimed at an American-Afghan military convoy passing through the town.

The official said the death toll was likely to rise, and that 32 Afghans suffered injuries.

Msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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EPA/I. SAMEEM

Afghan security officials inspect the scene where of a suicide attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Wednesday.

A dusty marketplace in southern Afghanistan was turned into a gruesome scene of blood and bodies on Wednesday after at least two suicide attacks, which left 22 civilians dead and at least 50 others injured, officials said.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the militant group was behind the attacks in Kandahar, the capital of Kandahar province and the spiritual birthplace of the insurgency, The Associated Press reported. 

In the east, two American pilots were killed in a helicopter crash amid enemy activity, an un-named senior U.S. defense official at the Pentagon told The Associated Press. NATO confirmed that two service members had been killed in the crash but not their nationality or any other information.

Also in the east, Afghan officials and residents said a pre-dawn NATO air-strike targeting militants killed civilians celebrating a wedding in Logar province, including women and children, although a NATO forces spokesman said they had no reports of civilians being killed in the overnight raid to capture a Taliban leader.

Seven killed in attack on NATO base in Afghanistan

NATO said a number of insurgents had been killed as a result of the operation, and that two Afghan women had received medical care after being wounded. The women had not received life-threatening injuries, NATO said.

A local member of parliament told NBC News that at least 18 people were killed in the attack.  

AP Photo/Ihsanullah Majroh

Afghan villagers gather at a house destroyed in an apparent NATO raid in Logar province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday.

"Among those killed were civilians and members of the Taliban," Saib Khan told NBC News.  "It is hard to obtain the exact number of casualties because a wedding party was staying in the same area where the airstrike occurred."

Local officials told Afghanistan's TOLOnews that 13 civilians had been killed in the airstrike.  

There was no immediate explanation for the different accounts. 

Kandahar attack
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the Kandahar attack on civilians, saying it proved the "enemy is getting weaker because they are killing innocent people." 

One suicide bomber detonated a three-wheeled motorbike filled with explosives first, Rahmatullah Atrafi, deputy police chief in Kandahar province told the AP. Then, as people rushed to assist the casualties, two other suicide bombers on foot walked up to the site and blew themselves up, he said.

The life of a female cardiologist in Afghanistan

The explosions left a bloody scene of body parts, shoes, soda cans, snacks and debris from three shops that were destroyed. 

Mohammad Naeem, a 30-year-old shopkeeper, said he was selling soft drinks to a customer when the first blast occurred.

"I dropped to the ground," he told the AP. "When I got up, I looked outside and I heard people shouting for help." 

Naeem said he helped his customer, who was wounded, into his shop. 

Obama hails 'new kind of relationship' with Kabul

"He was bleeding. I put cloth on his wound to stop the bleeding," he said. "I was busy with that when the other blasts occurred." 

Islam Zada, a truck driver, was on the other side of the road having tea near his parked truck when the attack began.

"I couldn't see anything except for fire and dust," Zada said of the scene. "I found a wounded truck driver on our side of the road and went to help him," Zada said. "We gave him some water and when we were talking to him the other blasts occurred." 

The number of Afghan civilians killed dropped 36 percent in the first four months of the year compared with last year, according to the latest figures compiled by the U.N. While the trend is promising, the U.N. laments that too many civilians are being caught up in the violence as insurgents fight Afghan and foreign forces. 

The U.N. said last month that 579 civilians were killed in the first four months - down from 898 killed in the same period of 2011. 

Anti-government forces caused 79 percent of civilian casualties and Afghan and foreign forces 9 percent, according to the U.N. It was not clear who was responsible for the remaining 12 percent.

NBC News' Atia Abawi and Akbar Shinwari, and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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The second U.S. drone attack in as many days killed 10 people in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, intelligence officials said, an incident likely to raise tensions in the standoff between Washington and Islamabad over NATO supply routes to Afghanistan.

The remotely-piloted aircraft fired four missiles at a suspected Islamist militant hideout in the Birmal area of the South Waziristan tribal region near the Afghanistan border, officials said.

Tribal sources told NBC News that two senior Taliban commanders, named as Malang and Yarullah, were among those killed in the attack.

A drone strike in the same area killed two suspected militants, including one of Malang’s brothers, on Saturday.

The United States and Pakistan are locked in difficult negotiations to re-open overland supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan, with no signs of a breakthrough.

Islamabad blocked the routes last November to protest the death of 24 Pakistani soldiers by cross-border friendly fire from NATO aircraft. The supply lines through Pakistan are considered vital to the planned withdrawal of most foreign combat troops from Afghanistan before the end of 2014.

The CIA drone campaign fuels anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan and is counterproductive because of collateral damage, Pakistani officials say. But U.S. officials say such strikes are highly effective against militants.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON - The United States military is under-reporting the number of times that Afghan soldiers and police open fire on American and other foreign troops.

The U.S.-led coalition routinely reports each time an American or other foreign soldier is killed by an Afghan in uniform. But The Associated Press has learned it does not report insider attacks in which the Afghan wounds — or misses — his U.S. or allied target. It also doesn't report the wounding of troops who were attacked alongside those who were killed.

Such attacks reveal a level of mistrust and ill will between the U.S.-led coalition and its Afghan counterparts in an increasingly unpopular war. The U.S. and its military partners are working more closely with Afghan troops in preparation for handing off security responsibility to them by the end of 2014.

In recent weeks an Afghan soldier opened fire on a group of American soldiers but missed the group entirely. The Americans quickly shot him to death. Not a word about this was reported by the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, as the coalition is formally known. It was disclosed to the AP by a U.S. official who was granted anonymity in order to give a fuller picture of the "insider" problem.

ISAF also said nothing about last week's attack in which two Afghan policemen in Kandahar province fired on U.S. soldiers, wounding two. Reporters learned of it from Afghan officials and from U.S. officials in Washington. The two Afghan policemen were shot to death by the Americans present.

Three NATO troops killed by alleged Afghan security forces

Just last Wednesday, an attack that killed a U.S. Army special forces soldier, Staff Sgt. Andrew T. Brittonmihalo, 25, of Simi Valley, Calif., also wounded three other American soldiers. The death was reported by ISAF as an insider attack, but it made no mention of the wounded — or that an Afghan civilian also was killed.

The attacker was an Afghan special forces soldier who opened fire with a machine gun at a base in Kandahar province. He was killed by return fire.

That attack apparently was the first by a member of the Afghan special forces, who are more closely vetted than conventional Afghan forces and are often described by American officials as the most effective and reliable in the Afghan military.

Coalition officials do not dispute that such non-fatal attacks happen, but they have not provided a full accounting.

The insider threat has existed for years but has grown more deadly. Last year there were 21 fatal attacks that killed 35 coalition service members, according to ISAF figures. That compares with 11 fatal attacks and 20 deaths the previous year. In 2007 and 2008 there were a combined total of four attacks and four deaths.

ISAF has released brief descriptions of each of the fatal attacks for 2012 but says similar information for fatal attacks in 2011 is considered classified and therefore cannot be released.

Has the Taliban fallen on tough times?

Jamie Graybeal, an ISAF spokesman in Kabul, disclosed Monday in response to repeated AP requests that in addition to 10 fatal insider attacks so far this year, there have been two others that resulted in no deaths or injuries, plus one attack that resulted in wounded, for a total of 13 attacks. The three non-fatal attacks had not previously been reported.

Graybeal also disclosed that in most of the 10 fatal attacks a number of other ISAF troops were wounded. By policy, the fact that the attacks resulted in wounded as well as a fatality is not reported, he said.

Asked to explain why non-fatal insider attacks are not reported, Graybeal said the coalition does not disclose them because it does not have consent from all coalition governments to do so.

"All releases must be consistent with the national policies of troop contributing nations," Graybeal said.

Graybeal said a new review of this year's data showed that the 10 fatal attacks resulted in the deaths of 19 ISAF service members. His office had previously said the death total was 18. Most of those killed this year have been Americans but France, Britain and other coalition member countries also have suffered fatalities.

Gunman kills two US Army officers in Afghan Interior Ministry

Graybeal said each attack in 2012 and 2011 was "an isolated incident and has its own underlying circumstances and motives." Just last May, however, an unclassified internal ISAF study, called "A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility," concluded, "Such fratricide-murder incidents are no longer isolated; they reflect a growing systemic threat." It said many attacks stemmed from Afghan grievances related to cultural and other conflicts with U.S. troops.

Mark Jacobson, an international affairs expert at the German Marshall Fund in Washington and a former deputy NATO senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, said attacks of all types are cause for worry.

"You have to build up trust when working with partners, and years of trust can be destroyed in just a minute," Jacobson said. No matter what the motivation of the Afghan attacker, "it threatens the partnership."

Until now there has been little public notice of non-fatal insider attacks, even though they would appear to reflect the same deadly intent as that of Afghans who manage to succeed in killing their foreign partners.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said the army has tightened its monitoring of soldiers' activities recently and, in some cases, taken action to stop insider attacks.

For example, "a number of soldiers" have been arrested for activity that might suggest a plot, such as providing information on army activities to people outside the military, he said. Some have been dismissed from the Army, but he did not provide figures.

U.S. officials say that in most cases the Afghans who turn their guns on their supposed allies are motivated not by sympathy for the Taliban or on orders from insurgents but rather act as a result of personal grievances against the coalition.

In a later press statement on its Twitter feed, ISAF said it "strongly refutes" the suggestion it is under-reporting "green-on-blue" incidents. It said it collects reports of all attacks but does not issue press notices unless the incidents are fatal.

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KABUL, Afghanistan -- Insurgents ambushed a NATO coalition supply convoy in a mountainous area of western Afghanistan, sparking a three-hour firefight in which an Afghan soldier, five security guards and at least 14 attackers were killed, Afghan officials said Thursday.

Najibullah Najibi, a spokesman for the Afghan National Army's western region, told The Associated Press that the battle raged Wednesday along a highway regularly used by coalition supply trucks in Bala Buluk district of Farah province.

"The fighting was intense and we sent in extra forces," Najibi said.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Jangir / AFP - Getty Images

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

There were varying estimates of the number of militants killed. 

Raouf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Afghan National Police in the west, said more than 30 militants were killed and 10 others were
wounded.

Suicide vests found in Afghan defense ministry

Sayed Abdul Wahid, an official of the Arya security company, said his workers who were fighting with AK-47s were overpowered by
militants using heavy weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.

Slideshow:

Kevin Frayer / AP

In southern Afghanistan, the focus of the U.S. war effort, nearly all the Afghan soldiers are foreigners too. Photographer Kevin Frayer shows these soldiers in a series of portraits.

Launch slideshow

He said five of his employees were killed and five others were wounded by insurgents who burned three vehicles in the convoy.

US orders more security for troops in Afghanistan

Meanwhile. a service member with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force died after a blast caused by an improvised explosive device in southern Afghanistan, NBC News reported Thursday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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