France suspending Afghan military operations after death of four soldiers

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday he was suspending military operations in Afghanistan and mulling an early withdrawal of troops there, after confirming that four soldiers killed there were French.

An Afghan intelligence security source said earlier that four soldiers were killed and 17 wounded by an Afghan soldier in the Taghab valley of eastern Kapisa province.

“The French army is alongside its allies but we cannot accept that a single one of our soldiers be wounded or killed by our allies, it's unacceptable,” Sarkozy said, dispatching Defence Minister Gerard Longuet to Afghanistan.

The shootings were the latest of several in which western soldiers have been killed by members of the
Afghan security forces, undermining trust between Afghan and western troops in the run-up to the withdrawal of foreign combat troops in 2014.

Dozens of foreign soldiers have been killed in recent years by what NATO dubs the insider threat, complicating coalition efforts to train Afghanistan's army and police force before foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.

Two French Foreign Legion soldiers and one American were killed in separate episodes of so-called “green-on-blue” shootings last month, which refer to the colors of the Afghan army and the symbol of NATO, although the coalition no longer releases the number of its troops killed by Afghan soldiers.

In November, an Afghan soldier shot and wounded three Australian and two Afghan soldiers in the south, less than two weeks after an Afghan soldier shot and killed three Australian soldiers and an Afghan interpreter.

And in September last year, an Afghan guard employed by the U.S. embassy opened fire inside a CIA office in Kabul, killing an American contractor.

Friday's deaths bring the total number of French soldiers killed in Afghanistan to 82 since France joined the international military operation in Afghanistan in 2001.

Separately, six foreign soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, with NATO denying the craft was brought down by insurgents, the coalition's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

The Taliban, which often makes exaggerated claims of military successes, claimed to have shot down the helicopter, but an ISAF spokesman said their were no militants in the area when the crash occurred.

It is the worst crash since August last year when 30 soldiers, mostly elite U.S. navy SEAL commandos, died when their helicopter came down in eastern Afghanistan.