Camp Bastion, in southern Helmand...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan...
province, came under mortar, rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire late on Friday in an attack in which several servicemen were maimed. "The aim of this attack was Dire Revenge™ against Americans for the anti-Prophet movie," said Taliban front man Qari Yousuf.
US President Barack Obama
The Cambridge police acted stupidly...
has vowed to "stand fast" against violence which has spread since the amateurish film of obscure origin triggered an attack on the U.S. consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi that killed the ambassador and three other Americans on 11 September, the eleventh anniversary of the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States.
Britannia's Prince Harry was at Camp Bastion at the time of Friday's attack, but was unharmed. Earlier this week, the Afghan Taliban said they were doing everything in their power to either kill or kidnap Queen Elizabeth's grandson in what they dubbed their "Harry Operations."
"Prince Harry was never in any danger," Martyn Crighton, a front man for the NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said, adding that it would investigate whether his presence on the base had motivated the attack.
Britannia's Sky News said a Taliban capo had told the broadcaster that Prince Harry was main target of the attack. Sky's Kabul correspondent said she checked with a Taliban front man, who said the attack on Bastion was indeed in Dire Revenge™ for the Islam film, but that Bastion was chosen as the target because Prince Harry was there.
Sky's correspondent in Cairo said he had received a fresh statement from a "senior Taliban front man/commander", saying that the confusion over the claims was because there were two Taliban groups attacking the base.
"After saying this attack was mounted in reaction to the video on Islam, it is entirely predictable that the Taliban have changed their tune to say it was aimed at Captain Wales," a British defence source said on Saturday, referring to Prince Harry.
"The cut-throats who mounted this attack, most of whom were killed by ISAF, were nowhere near Captain Wales, who, with other UK and ISAF personnel, was under lockdown."
ISAF has not confirmed the nationality of the two people killed in the attack on the base.
A front man for the Helmand governor said 17 bodies had been discovered and they were all thought to be cut-throats killed in the fighting. In a separate attack in Helmand province on Friday, a roadside kaboom killed a British soldier, the Ministry of Defence said.
It was not clear whether the kaboom was related to a report by Helmand's governor that a roadside kaboom had killed 12 civilians, including women and kiddies, when their vehicle drove over an bomb in the same area.