Afghan militants armed with rocket propelled grenades managed to break into a main U.S. Marine base in Afghanistan Friday, killing at least two and wounding an unknown amount. A spokesman says the attack may still be ongoing and that there has been major damage done to buildings, an aircraft hangar, and several military jets. According to a NATO spokesman, Prince Harry was on the base at the time of the attack but was "never in any danger."

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The attack was aimed at Camp Leatherneck, the US sector of Camp Bastion which is the main American base in southern Afghanistan. Although Bastion is a British base, it is also home to American, Estonian, Danish and Afghan troops. It has two runways, a hospital and is the supply hub for southern Afghanistan handling thousands of flights of every month. The base is in desert several miles outside of Lashkar Gar, the capital of Helmand province.

A Washington official said the attack involved a range of weapons, possibly including mortars, rockets or rocket-propelled grenades, as well as small arms. The base is often subject to mortar fire, but officials in Afghanistan said the damage was far more severe than normal.

Meanwhile, from Yemen to Sudan, the number of killed and wounded from demonstrations in front of American embassies grows after an anti-Islam movie sparked furor in Muslim countries. It is not yet clear if the attack is related.

The suicide rate is skyrocketing among American troops as numbers have reached nearly one per day in 2012, according to new Pentagon data revealed in a report on Thursday. Over the first 155 days of 2012 154 active-duty troops have committed suicide, far outdistancing the number of those killed in action in Afghanistan. The research shows a growing burden for troops in wartime demands in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. The military is also struggling with increase in the number of sexual assaults, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and other misbehavior, the report stated. The number is up 18 percent from last year, and 16 percent from 2009, the highest year total of suicides in the military on record. In both 2008 and 2009, suicide deaths outnumbered combat deaths.

Kim Ruocco, widow of Marine Maj. John Ruocco, a helicopter pilot who hanged himself in 2005 between Iraq deployments, said he was unable to bring himself to go for help.

“He was so afraid of how people would view him once he went for help,” she said in an interview at her home in suburban Boston. “He thought that people would think he was weak, that people would think he was just trying to get out of redeploying or trying to get out of service, or that he just couldn’t hack it - when, in reality, he was sick. He had suffered injury in combat and he had also suffered from depression and let it go untreated for years. And because of that, he’s dead today.”

Iraq Veterans Against the War invited Occupy Denver to a teach-in at the Mercury Cafe on April 11, 2012. Local chapter members Garett Reppenhagen, Kelly Doughtery, and Graham Clumpner opened with personal accounts of what led them to join IVAW and a discussion about what veterans and active duty service members are doing to resist war and militarism. We then heard from Matt Howard and Scott Olson, a vet wounded while peacefully protesting at Occupy Oakland, about a new IVAW project called Operation Recovery. Operation Recovery advocates for individuals suffering from trauma and for their right to remove themselves from the source of the trauma.

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Scott Olsen served two tours in Iraq with the Marines. He was critically injured last October when the Oakland police shot him in the head with a projectile while he was peacefully protesting as part of Occupy Oakland. He is currently organizing with IVAW and Occupy in San Francisco and Oakland. Matt Howard also served in Iraq with the Marines. He is currently a resident organizer at Under the Hood Coffeehouse and GI Resource Center in Kileen, TX, the home of Ft. Hood Army base. Matt is organizing with active duty soldiers there around the Operation Recovery campaign which aims to stop the deployment of traumatized troops.

Graham Clumpner is a two-tour Afghanistan veteran and member of the Colorado IVAW chapter. Graham is an organizer with the Operation Recovery campaign and is currently organizing the Right to Heal tour which will bring soldiers and veterans to communities across the country to talk about issues of war and trauma.