Insurgents stormed remote outposts in eastern Afghanistan killing eight Americans in the deadliest battle in more than a year, the US military said this morning.
Afghan provincial authorities said they had lost contact with scores of Afghan policemen after the day-long attack yesterday and did not know whether they were dead or alive. NATO said at least two Afghan soldiers were killed.
The fighting in the Kamdesh district of eastern Nuristan was 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.
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 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."
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.
The province's deputy police chief Mohammad Farooq said the fate of an entire 90-strong police force in the Kamdesh district was unknown.
NATO said its troops had inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers, but did not say how many.
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.
Reuters