The plane of America’s top military officer, General Martin Dempsey, was damaged early on Tuesday and two members of maintenance crew were injured as a rocket was fired on US airbase of Bagram.

The plane of America’s top military officer, General Martin Dempsey, was damaged early on Tuesday and two members of maintenance crew were injured as a rocket was fired on US airbase of Bagram.

Two rockets struck the vast Bagram air field overnight, with one causing damage to the C-17 used by the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who left the base using another plane, Dempsey’s spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said.

Shrapnel from the rocket struck the door of the plane while it was parked on the runway, with two American maintenance crew suffering minor injuries in the attack, Lapan said.
The attack posed no threat to the safety of Dempsey or his staff, who were asleep in their quarters at the time of the incident, officers said.

Dempsey had been visiting Kabul to meet commanders of the NATO-led force and Afghan top brass amid a surge in assaults by Afghan security personnel on the occupation forces, in the so-called “green-on-blue-attacks”.

A total of 10 soldiers, mostly US, have lost their lives at the hands of their Afghan allies in the past two weeks, and the attacks have caused almost one in every four coalition deaths in the war so far this month.
The total of 40 deaths so far this year amount to 13 percent of all international coalition fatalities in 2012.