KABUL, Afghanistan — After suffering significant setbacks in the fight against insurgents in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan troops have pulled out of a combat outpost where nine American soldiers were killed in a pitched battle with Taliban fighters Sunday.
U.S. and Afghan soldiers withdrew from the makeshift outpost near the remote village of Wanat as Taliban fighters swarmed the area near the border of the eastern provinces of Nuristan and Kunar, NATO and Afghan officials said Wednesday. An unspecified number of NATO and Afghan troops remain in the region near the edge of Pakistan’s western border, said Capt. Mike Finney, a spokesman for NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF.
The combat outpost in Wanat had been operational for only two or three days before Taliban insurgents launched an assault on it Sunday, NATO officials said. Hundreds of Taliban fighters attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and gunfire. About 100 to 150 U.S. and Afghan soldiers struggled to repel the early morning attack, firing a fusillade of bullets on insurgents who had taken up positions in a village mosque and several other locations.
In addition to the nine U.S. troops killed, 15 American and at least four Afghan soldiers were wounded after insurgents breached the outer area of the outpost. The attack was the deadliest in Afghanistan since 16 U.S. troops were killed when their helicopter was shot down in 2005.
NATO officials said dozens of insurgents also were killed in the hours-long skirmish and its immediate aftermath.
Finney said ISAF troops were reinforced shortly after the devastating attack on the outpost and will remain in other parts of the region to fight the insurgency for the foreseeable future.
“We aren’t abandoning the area. Far from it,” Finney said. “The Taliban have dispersed, and we’re hunting them down to make sure they don’t do something like this again.”
Twenty-eight U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan last month.
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