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Eight US troops killed in E Afghan battle

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-04 15:11

KABUL: Eight US troops were killed in battle when remote outposts were stormed by fighters in an Afghan district the Americans were planning to abandon, the military said on Sunday, the deadliest battle in more than a year.

US Marines board a helicopter at Camp Bastion in Helmand province in Afghanistan October 3, 2009. [Agencies]

At least two Afghan soldiers were killed in the fighting in Nuristan province, in an area from which US forces had already announced plans to withdraw as part of commander General Stanley McChrystal's strategy to focus his forces on population centres.

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The province's deputy police chief, Mohammad Farooq, said contact had been lost with 19 Afghan police in the Kamdesh district, and it was not clear if they were dead or alive.

The attacks were launched on Saturday by militia from a local mosque and a nearby village on two joint NATO and Afghan outposts, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said. The NATO troops in the area are American.

"My heart goes out to the families of those we have lost and to their fellow soldiers who remained to finish the fight," Colonel Randy George, commander of the US force in the eastern mountain area bordering Pakistan, said in the statement.

"This was a complex attack in a difficult area. Both the US and Afghan soldiers fought bravely together. I am extremely proud of their professionalism and bravery."

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the movement was behind the attack, and claimed that dozens of Afghan soldiers and police and Western troops were killed.

The NATO statement said: "coalition forces' previously announced plans to depart the area as part of a broader realignment to protect larger populations remains unchanged."

The attack was the deadliest for US forces since nine were killed in a July 2008 battle in nearby Kunar province, which the US military is investigating as a debacle that will teach its forces how to understand the demands of combat in Afghanistan.

US forces have suffered some of their worst casualties in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan where they have been trying to control remote passes used by Taliban fighters as infiltration routes from Pakistan.

Under McChrystal's new counter-insurgency strategy they are supposed to move into more heavily populated areas to protect the population and reduce the influence of insurgents, while abandoning efforts to defend remote locations.

The war in Afghanistan has reached its most violent phase this year, with attacks by fighters spreading from traditional strongholds in the south and east to once-peaceful western and northern parts of the country.

McChrystal, who now commands more than 100,000 troops, two thirds of them American, has requested tens of thousands more to implement his new strategy, warning that without them, the war will probably be lost.

US President Barack Obama, who already ordered 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan this year, is re-evaluating his overall strategy for the region before considering whether to send more troops.