Two marines die in assault on Camp Bastion

At least two US marines died when militants breached the perimeter of the sprawling base in Helmand province.

The Taliban told the BBC that they carried out the attack in revenge for a film mocking Islam which has triggered protests around the Muslim world.

Aircraft and buildings were damaged but Nato says its forces killed 18 of the insurgents and captured one.

Camp Bastion is situated in the middle of the desert with excellent visibility all around, says the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Kabul.

Continue reading the main storThe UK's Prince Harry began a second tour of duty at the base just over a week ago, but is said to be unharmed.

The attack came after at least seven people died in protests over the film mocking the Prophet Muhammad in Khartoum, Tunis and Cairo on Friday and amid fears of further unrest.

'Engulfed in fire'

Nato officials say insurgents used small arms, rockets and mortars in the attack on Camp Bastion which took place at about 22:00 on Friday (17:30 GMT), under cover of darkness.

Major Adam Wojack, from Isaf joint command in Afghanistan, said the attackers found a "vulnerable part of the perimeter" and quietly breached it.

Once inside, the insurgents attacked the airfield side of the compound and caused "some damage to aircraft, damage to structures and killed those two marines", the officer said.

The attack was finally fought off by mainly American and British personnel who "ended up killing 18 of those attackers", he said.

Continue reading the main storIsaf said one of the attackers was also wounded and subsequently captured during the assault.

Update: Taliban fighters attacked the coalition base at Camp Bastion-Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province just before midnight local time with small-arms fire and rocket attacks, according to U.S. officials.

A U.S. official said Prince Harry is safe and was not affected by the attack. The British Defense Ministry said today that Prince Harry had been deployed to Camp Bastion along with his Apache helicopter unit. It is Prince Harry's second deployment to Afghanistan.
A Taliban spokesman had said days after the announcement of Harry's deployment that they would try to kill him while he's in Helmand Province.

"We will do our best to kill Prince Harry and Britain's other troops based in Helmand," Zabihullah Mujahid said. "It is not important for us to kidnap him. We will target him and we will kill him."

The coalition camp houses as many as 28,000 international troops. The British side of the base is known as Camp Bastion, the adjoining U.S. facility is called Camp Leatherneck. Defense officials say the casualties and damage to buildings and aircraft occurred on a Marine portion of the base located at Camp Bastion.

A Defense official said two Harrier fighter jets flown by U.S. Marines were damaged in the attack.

US Intelligence warned embassy of threat 48 hrs in advance of attack.

By Suzanne Kelly CNN

Concerned about the reaction to an anti-Muslim film that was gaining attention online, the U.S. intelligence community sent a cable to the embassy in Egypt warning of the concern, a U.S. official told CNN. It was sent 48 hours before the protests in Cairo and Benghazi in Libya, the official said.

The cable did not discuss any specific threat, the official said. It warned instead about the existence of the movie being posted on the internet and the fact that it was gaining attention. A seven minute portion of the movie aired on an Egyptian TV talk show the weekend before the protests started, according to a Department of Homeland Security/Federal Bureau of Intelligence memo obtained by CNN on Thursday.

The cable was not sent to the embassy in Tripoli, Libya or the consulate in Benghazi. US officials have said there was no intelligence ahead of the attack in Benghazi, which intelligence officials still believe was not planned. The White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday there was no "actionable intelligence" indicating an attack was being planned.

There are hundreds if not thousands of cables sent each day, the official said, and there was no specific threat attached to this one, because a specific threat was not known.

Former Navy Seal among dead in Libya

One of the Americans killed alongside Ambassador Christopher Stevens in an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya Tuesday told ABC News before his death that he was working with the State Department on an intelligence mission to round up dangerous weapons in the war-torn nation.

In an interview with ABC News last month, Glen Doherty, a 42-year-old former Navy SEAL who worked as a contractor with the State Department, said he personally went into the field to track down so-called MANPADS, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and destroy them.

After the fall of dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the State Department launched a mission to round up thousands of MANPADS that may have been looted from military installations across the country. U.S. officials previously told ABC News they were concerned the MANPADS could fall into the hands of terrorists, creating a threat to commercial airliners.

Is the US unwittingly letting Chinese cyberspies in the back door?

CBS News) The House Intelligence Committee will hold a hearing Thursday that focuses on two Chinese telecommunications companies that are trying to gain market share in the United States.

Critics say those companies may be under pressure to spy on American businesses and intelligence agencies.

China has a long record of inserting spies, from graduate students to respected scientists, into U.S. companies to siphon out valuable trade secrets.

What U.S. officials are worried about now is that bringing large Chinese telecommunications companies to the U.S. could give the Chinese government a way to spy on a massive scale, without ever having to use a single human being.

During the Olympics, a company that most Americans have never heard of was buying a lot of TV time. Huawei, the world's second largest telecommunications equipment maker, was putting its best foot forward to an American audience.

Huawei already has a presence in the U.S. market. Their phones can be found at any Cricket Outlet, and the company did $1.3 billion in business in the U.S. last year alone.

But Huawei wants a bigger stake in the U.S. market. The company wants to provide telecommunications systems and infrastructure to large U.S. companies, and that, U.S. intelligence officials are worried, could provide China with a giant Trojan horse.

Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, says the Chinese government could pressure a Chinese company like Huawei to use its technology to spy on the U.S.

Baker said, "If the Chinese government said, 'Your country needs you. You need to do this for your country,' it's hard to imagine that a patriotic company would refuse to do that."

Here is what some intelligence officials are afraid of: China has been accused of being behind a massive effort to infiltrate U.S. companies with spies to steal corporate trade secrets that may be worth millions - even billions of dollars. What if a Chinese-run telecommunications firm provided the very infrastructure - the phones, emails, and routers - that those trade secret pass through every day?

Shawn Henry, a former assistant director of the FBI for cyber security, says there are ways to easily add what they call a back door to any system. Henry said, "Telecommunications equipment is put in place, and its purpose is to route data through a network. An adversary who had control over programming that hardware or that software could potentially re-route data, so that it was able to be siphoned off or viewed by others."

Concerns about Huawei are underscored by the fact that its founder is a former high-ranking Chinese military officer.

"They're a communist government. They have more control over their companies and their citizens," Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., said.

Ruppersberger is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, which launched a bipartisan investigation into Huawei and another company, ZTE Communications, last year.

Ruppersberger told CBS News, "If you're gonna put your technology in our country and that allows you the ability to steal information or cyber attack our companies and our citizens, then we want to protect our citizens. And that's our role, why we're doing this investigation."

Huawei says it welcomed the investigation as a chance to answer any questions. The company declined CBS News' request for an interview, but said in a statement that their integrity was proven and "Huawei has not and will not jeopardize our global commercial success nor the integrity of our customers' networks for any third party, government or otherwise."

Sources tell CBS News the Intelligence Committee's final report on Huawei is expected to be released in early October.

CBS News reached out to four telecommunications companies in the U.S. that use Huawei technology. They declined to speak on camera, but one provider told CBS News their company was replacing their Huawei equipment due to the congressional investigation.