Nine American soldiers killed in Afghan assault

Published 11:03 pm Sunday, July 13, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan — 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.

Fifteen Americans and four Afghan soldiers were wounded.

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.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell described the casualties suffered by U.S. and Afghan forces as “significant,” but noted they had successfully repelled the attack.

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 National Army soldiers. That would mean that one in five of the American defenders were killed and one-third of them wounded.

The attack was unusual in its audacity. Taliban guerrillas rarely make sustained frontal assaults on much better-armed coalition forces, preferring hit-and-run attacks and roadside bombs. But militants do make occasional attempts to overrun outposts, particularly if their surveillance indicates there are relatively few troops inside, or they are aware that terrain or location might make it difficult for Western forces to conduct airstrikes or bring in reinforcements.

It would be considered an enormous battlefield coup for the insurgents to capture a coalition base, particularly if they were able to take captives and seize weaponry. Insurgents often videotape their attacks on Western forces and use the images in recruiting and propaganda videos.

Sunday’s deaths accelerated what had been a rapidly rising fatality count among coalition troops in Afghanistan. During May and June, the 65 deaths among U.S. and other NATO troops killed in Afghanistan outnumbered American military fatalities in Iraq.

Also Sunday, the U.S. military announced the names of two soldiers — Army Spc. Brian S. Leon Guerrero, 34, of Hagatna, Guam; and Army Spc. Samson A. Mora, 28, of Dededo, Guam — who died after their vehicle struck an explosive in Babo Kheyl, Afghanistan, on Thursday.

In other violence, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up next to a police patrol in the southern province of Uruzgan, killing 24 people. The bomb attack on a police patrol at a busy intersection of the Deh Rawood district killed five police officers and 19 civilians, wounding more than 30 others, said Uruzgan’s police chief. Most of those killed and wounded were shopkeepers and young boys selling goods in the street, he said.

Elsewhere, Taliban militants executed two women in central Afghanistan late Saturday after accusing them of working as prostitutes on a U.S. base.

The women, dressed in blue burqas, were shot and killed just outside Ghazni city in central Afghanistan, said a spokesman for Ghazni’s governor. He called the two “innocent local people.”

Taliban fighters told Associated Press Television News the two women were executed for allegedly running a prostitution ring catering to U.S. soldiers and other foreign contractors at a U.S. base in Ghazni city.

First Lt. Nathan Perry, a U.S. military spokesman, said he had not heard allegations “anything close to that nature.”

Meanwhile, at least 40 militants were killed following an attack on Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces in Helmand province, the coalition said in a statement.