Author Topic: Eight U.S. soldiers killed in east Afghan battle  (Read 3867 times)

nestopwar

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Eight U.S. soldiers killed in east Afghan battle
« on: October 04, 2009, 06:25:15 PM »

Reuters

Eight U.S. soldiers killed in east Afghan battle
Sun Oct 4, 2009 4:45pm BST 

FACTBOX - Military deaths in Afghanistan By Amin Jalali
ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered their worst losses in more than a year when fighters stormed remote outposts near the Pakistan border, cutting off contact with police, authorities said on Sunday.

NATO said eight Americans and at least two Afghan soldiers died. Afghan provincial authorities said they had lost contact with the Afghan police force in the area after the day-long battle 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 and was not reported until Sunday.

U.S. forces had already decided to abandon the area 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 with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and rifles, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said.

The NATO troops in the area, who are American, responded by summoning air strikes from jets and helicopter gunships. They said that at day's end they still controlled the outposts.....