A military source tells Fox News the strange incident on the tarmac Wednesday at Camp Bastion that occurred moments before Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived via C-17 was an attempted attack.

This official could not say whether the local Afghan involved knew Panetta was about to arrive, but he could say it certainly wasn’t any type of accident.

Fox News has learned the attacker was an Afghan interpreter who was carrying gasoline and a lighter with him in the pickup truck, which he managed to steal from a British service member. The coalition service member was injured during the incident, possibly run over by the truck.

The Afghan interpreter managed to drive the stolen car over the very ramp where Panetta was set to arrive. The secretary was soon diverted to another ramp.

After crashing the pickup truck into a ditch, the driver got out and had apparently lit himself on fire, according to this source.

Pentagon Spokesman George Little put out a statement earlier saying “no explosives were found.”

The statement also said the driver is now in custody, and an investigation is underway.

Defense Secretary Panetta was visiting Afghanistan to hold a series of meetings with troops and Afghan leaders in the wake of the killing of 16 Afghan civilians allegedly by a U.S. soldier.

“We will not allow individual incidents to undermine our resolve to that mission,” he told Marines at Camp Leatherneck. “We will be tested, we will be challenged, we’ll be challenged by our enemy, we’ll be challenged by ourselves, we’ll be challenged by the hell of war itself. But none of that, none of that, must ever deter us from the mission that we must achieve.”

Panetta and other U.S. officials say the shooting spree should not derail the U.S. and NATO strategy of a gradual withdrawal of troops by the end of 2014. But it has further soured relations with war-weary Afghans, jeopardizing the U.S. strategy of working closely with Afghan forces on the transition.

(Source: Fox News)