NATO has suffered its deadliest attack in Afghanistan in more than a year after eight US soldiers were killed in a firefight in the east of the country, the alliance said yesterday.
Tribal militia launched attacks on Saturday from a mosque and a village in Nuristan Province near the border with Pakistan, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.
“Coalition forces effectively repelled the attack and inflicted heavy enemy casualties, while eight ISAF and two ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] service members were killed,” a statement said.
No exact details were given on the location of the firefight, which a Taliban spokesman said had killed 30 foreign and Afghan troops.
An ISAF spokesman told reporters later: “I can confirm that they [the foreign troops] were all American.”
The attack was the deadliest single incident for foreign forces since 10 French troops were killed in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan in August last year.
Six Italian soldiers were killed in a massive suicide bomb in the capital Kabul last month.
Coalition forces are battling to quell a growing insurgency that is spreading across Afghanistan, nearly eight years after the hardline Islamist Taliban were ousted from power.
Eastern Afghanistan has seen an escalation in insurgent-related violence recently as Taliban-linked militias spread their footprint beyond regions like Kandahar and Helmand provinces in the south, where they have long held sway.
The intelligence head of Nuristan Province, Mohammad Farooq, told reporters that Saturday’s attack took place in the province’s Kamdesh region, near the lawless border with Pakistan, where many al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathizers are based.
The Taliban were virtually wiped out in 2002, but are now on the march.
The London-based International Council on Security and Development think tank estimates they now have a permanent presence in 80 percent of the country. The commander of the more than 100,000 NATO and US forces in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, has described the Afghan security situation as “serious” and reportedly requested up to 40,000 more troops.
Mariam Abou Zahab, from the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris, said: “The Taliban are in a strong position. They want to show that they are everywhere.”
This year has been the deadliest year for foreign troops since 2001, with 394 deaths, 236 of them American, according to an AFP toll based on a tally by the independent icasualties.org Web site.
More than 1,430 soldiers have died since the start of US-led operations in 2001.
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