By Nightly News staff
It was supposed to be a week devoted to reporting on the military and political situation in Afghanistan, where a runoff presidential election is scheduled for Nov. 7.
Yet even as “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams was still in the air, making his way toward his first visit to the country in more than a year, assignments were being overturned. It would turn out to be a week looking for stories amid extraordinary violence that NBC’s Richard Engel reported has reached record levels.
First came the crashes of three helicopters on Monday, which killed 14 Americans, making October the deadliest month for U.S. forces since the war in Afghanistan began eight years ago. Then came the Taliban attack on a U.N. guesthouse Wednesday in Kabul, the capital, which killed eight people — five of them U.N. workers — plus the attackers.
In Kabul, the vibe has changed “literally overnight,” Williams observed in an e-mail interview with the Huffington Post.
“Kabul has hardened and tightened — it’s much more about security now that the Taliban has ‘entered the battle space’” with its attack Wednesday, which has prompted a reassessment of the U.N. role in promoting the election, Engel reported.
After the blast, “there was nothing here to salvage,” Chris Turner, a truck driver working as a contractor for the U.S. Defense Department, told Williams, who toured the devastation afterward.
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