Nine US troops killed in Afghan attack

Nine US soldiers and several militants were killed after rebels stormed a remote outpost in Afghanistan in one of the deadliest attacks on international forces in years, officials said on Monday.

Fifteen US soldiers and four Afghan troops were wounded in the attack early Sunday in the mountainous northeastern province of Kunar, military and Western officials told AFP.

Hours of fighting, including air strikes, prevented the militants from overrunning the base, with rebel casualties in the "high double figures", a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force told AFP.

"It was a well-organised attack," said ISAF Captain Mike Finney. "It was a ferocious attack. The troops in the combat outpost fought back hard to make sure the insurgents did not overrun the place."

Between 100 and 150 Afghan and international troops had moved into the outpost, near the village of Wanat, less than a week before the attack, Finney said.

Finney would not give the nationalities of the ISAF troops killed in the attack, but a Western official confirmed on condition of anonymity that they were US nationals.

The bodies were being repatriated Monday, Finney said.

Americans form the bulk of the nearly 70,000 international troops in Afghanistan to help the fragile government fight back an insurgency led by the hardline Taliban, who were ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

The fighting in Kunar was one of the deadliest incidents involving international forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

In June 2005, a rocket-propelled grenade brought down a Chinook helicopter in Kunar, killing 16 US soldiers. In September 2006, 14 British servicemen were killed when a Nimrod spy plane crashed in Helmand in the south.

Another international soldier was killed in Afghanistan on Sunday in a bomb blast in Helmand, the separate US-led coalition announced. The nationality of the soldier has not been released.

The coalition had killed 40 militants in a two-day operation in the same area, the force announced.

Sunday's deaths take to 133 the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year amid a spike in the insurgency-linked violence.

Also on Sunday, a suicide bomber targeted police in a busy bazaar in southern Uruzgan province, killing 24 Afghans, most of them civilians, police officials said.

And a roadside bomb blew up a vehicle belonging to a US-based private security firm in Helmand, killing six Afghan guards, provincial police chief General Mohammad Hussein Andiwal told AFP.

Two other guards were wounded in the attack, near the town of Gereshk. The vehicle was completely destroyed.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for that attack but it was similar to scores carried out by militants whom Afghan officials allege are being recruited and trained in neighbouring Pakistan.

Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta called Sunday for the region to work together to deal with the violence - in a reference to Pakistan.

"The terrorist enemy behind these operations, which are sustained by a complex set of networks and infrastructure located behind the border of Afghanistan, cannot be defended by military operations inside Afghanistan alone," Spanta said.

Afghan officials have accused Pakistan of being behind a suicide blast at the Indian embassy in Kabul earlier this month that left 41 people dead, saying the attack had the hallmarks of its intelligence agency.

Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack, the deadliest in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban.