Afghanistan attack kills 9 U.S. soldiers
Insurgents armed with machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades mounted a fierce assault on a remote, relatively lightly manned U.S. outpost in northeastern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing nine American soldiers.
It was the largest loss of U.S. troops' lives in a single incident in Afghanistan since June 2005, when 16 Americans died in the same province when a helicopter was shot down. The province, Kunar, is a swath of forbidding, mountainous terrain that borders Pakistan.
Reflecting the seriousness of the incident, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was briefed early Sunday on the assault, said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman. Morrell described the casualties suffered by U.S. and Afghan forces as "significant," but noted they had successfully repelled the attack.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, reported the deaths of nine of its soldiers without specifying their nationalities. But a senior Defense Department official and a U.S. military official in Afghanistan, both speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the incident, confirmed the dead were Americans. Fifteen Americans and four Afghan soldiers were wounded.
Although the attackers were driven back, the toll they exacted was undeniably heavy. The senior Defense Department official said the outpost was manned by 45 American troops and 25 Afghan soldiers. That would mean that one in five of the American defenders were killed and one-third wounded.
NATO divides Afghanistan into regional commands, and the eastern part of the country, including Kunar province, is under U.S. military control.
Although Afghanistan's south is the traditional heartland of the Taliban insurgency, the east has seen a sharp surge in attacks over the last few months. NATO has linked the increase to peace negotiations being conducted by Pakistani authorities with Taliban militants who shelter in the tribal lands on the Pakistani side of the border.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, visited Pakistan last week and emphasized U.S. concerns about the flow of fighters and weaponry from the tribal areas.
NATO has also accused the insurgents in Pakistan of deliberately seeking to fuel tensions by directing fire across the border at Western troops in Afghanistan. Last month, 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops were killed when coalition troops called in airstrikes after being fired on, an incident that drew an angry protest from Pakistan's new government.
