Militant fighters streaming from a village and a mosque attacked a pair of remote outposts near the Pakistan border, killing eight American soldiers and as many as seven Afghan forces in one of the fiercest gunbattles of the troubled eight-year war. The Taleban claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack for coalition forces since a similar raid in July 2008 killed nine American soldiers in the same mountainous region known as a haven for al-Qaida militants. The US has already said it plans to leave the remote area to focus on Afghan population centers. Fighting began at around dawn Saturday and lasted several hours, said Jamaludin Badar, governor of Nuristan province. Badar said the two outposts were on a hill – one near the top and one at the foot of the slope – flanked by the village on one side and the mosque on the other. Nearly 300 militant fighters flooded the lower Afghan outpost then swept around it to reach the American station on higher ground from both directions, said Mohammad Qasim Jangulbagh, the provincial police chief. The US military statement said the Americans and Afghans repelled the attack by tribal fighters and “inflicted heavy enemy casualties.” Jangulbagh said that the gunbattle was punctuated by US airstrikes and that 15 Afghan police were captured by the Taleban, including the local police chief and his deputy. Afghan forces were sent as reinforcements, but Jangulbagh said all communications to the district, Kamdesh, were severed and he had no way of knowing how they were faring Sunday. “This was a complex attack in a difficult area,” Col. Randy George, the area commander, said in the US statement. “Both the US and Afghan soldiers fought bravely together.” Nuristan, bordering Pakistan, was where a militant raid on another outpost in July 2008 claimed the lives of nine US soldiers and led to allegations of negligence by their senior commanders.
