Source: Reuters
KABUL, Oct. 4 (Reuters) - Eight U.S. troops were killed in day of fighting in the remote east of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, after fighters launched a "complex" attack, a military spokeswoman said on Sunday.
Captain Elizabeth Mathias said fighting raged through Saturday in Nuristan province after the attack.
By Amin Jalali
ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Insurgents stormed remote Afghan outposts near the Pakistani border, killing eight U.S. troops and cutting off scores of Afghan police, officials said on Sunday, in the deadliest battle in more than a year.
NATO said at least two Afghan soldiers died along with the eight Americans. Afghan provincial authorities said they had lost contact with scores of Afghan policemen after the day-long attack and did not know whether they were dead or alive.
The fighting took place in Nuristan province's Kamdesh district in high mountains along the eastern border with Pakistan on Saturday but was not reported until Sunday.
The battle showed the ferocity of the insurgency in a part of the country that U.S. forces have decided to abandon after years of heavy fighting. The troops had already announced plans to withdraw from the area as part of commander General Stanley McChrystal's strategy to focus his forces on population centers.
Militia from a local mosque and a nearby village launched the attacks 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 U.S. force in the eastern mountain area bordering Pakistan, said in the statement.
"This was a complex attack in a difficult area. Both the U.S. and Afghan soldiers fought bravely together. I am extremely proud of their professionalism and bravery."
As the battle raged, foreign troops sent in F-16 jet fighters and Apache helicopter gunships to help the forces caught in the battle, a spokeswoman for the U.S. military said.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the movement was behind the attack. He claimed that dozens of Afghan soldiers and police were killed along with Western troops.
Fighters captured 35 police during the battle and their fate would be decided by the movement's provincial council, he added.
Because of the loss of contact, Afghan authorities could give no firm figures for the number of their police who were killed.
The province's deputy police chief Mohammad Farooq said the fate of an entire 90-strong police force in the Kamdesh district was unknown. Hundreds of militants, including foreign nationals based in Pakistan, were involved in the attack, Farooq said.
NATO said its troops had inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers, but did not say how many.
Mujahid said seven Taliban were killed as a result of an air attack summoned by foreign troops during the 13 hours of battle. He said the Taliban attack included several suicide bombers, explosions and fighters storming the posts.
NEW STRATEGY
The attack was the deadliest for U.S. forces since nine were killed in a July 2008 battle in nearby Kunar province, which the U.S. military is investigating as a debacle that will teach its forces how to understand the demands of combat in Afghanistan.
U.S. forces have suffered some of their worst casualties in the east, where they have tried to control remote mountain passes used by Taliban fighters as infiltration routes from Pakistan.
Separately in the east, one U.S. service member died of wounds suffered from a bomb on Saturday, NATO said.
Nearly 400 Western troops have died this year in Afghanistan, by far the deadliest year of the war launched in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. More Western troops have died this year than in the entire period from 2001-2005.
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.
Saturday's attack would not alter NATO forces' plans to leave the area, the alliance said.
The war in Afghanistan has reached its most violent phase, with attacks by fighters spreading from traditional strongholds in the south and east to the once-peaceful west and north.
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 eight-year-old war will probably be lost.
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi, Peter Graff and Sayed Salahuddin in KABUL; Writing by Peter Graff and Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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