CIA mourns devastating loss in Afghanistan

US: The Central Intelligence Agency mourned Thursday the loss of seven employees in a suicide attack in Afghanistan, one of the deadliest blows ever for an agency increasingly on the frontlines of US wars.

The CIA lowered the flag to half-mast at its tightly guarded headquarters in the Washington suburbs, but did not release the names of the casualties, who died cloaked in the same anonymity with which they lived.

“Your triumphs and even your names may be unknown to your fellow Americans, but your service is deeply appreciated,” President Barack Obama wrote in a letter to CIA employees.

Obama said that since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, “the CIA has been tested as never before.”

“Because of your service, plots have been disrupted, American lives have been saved and our allies and partners have been more secure,” Obama said.

He said stars would be added in their name to the 90 already on the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters honoring spies who have fallen in the line of duty.

While more than 500 US and coalition forces have died in Afghanistan this year, Wednesday’s suicide attack showed a new level of sophistication for the Taliban who infiltrated the very agency in charge of finding them.

The CIA said that a Taliban bomber clad as an Afghan soldier managed to penetrate the defenses of a forward base in Khost, a pivotal province near the Pakistan border, detonating an explosives belt in a room described as a gym.

WASHINGTON, Friday, AFP