Groups of tribal militia attacked two American outposts in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, the American military said, killing eight American soldiers and two Afghan police officers in a bold attack that was the deadliest for American soldiers in months.
The attack took place on Saturday night in the Nuristan province, a remote area that shares a border with Pakistan.
Tribal fighters staged the attacks from a mosque and from a village close to the outposts, small bases shared by American and Afghan forces, the military said in a statement on Sunday. The military did not say whether the outposts had been overrun.
U.S. troops have had trouble there before: nine American soldiers were killed when 200 insurgents stormed their small outpost in the village of Wanat in 2008.
The attack took place in the Kamdish district in the eastern part of the province, he said. The American military statement said American forces had “effectively repelled the attack and inflicted heavy enemy casualties,” but did not give the location of the attack.
Mr. Badar said the fighting left at least five dead insurgents in the area. He believed the insurgents had come from Pakistan after military operations pushed them out of bases in the area, and that the operation was led by a Taliban commander in the area named Dost Muhammed.
The area had suffered civilian casualties in the past, and villagers there are extremely wary of American forces.
American forces had planned to pull out of the sparsely populated area, as part of a stragetic shift to place more troops in heavily populated centers. The American military statement said that plan “remained unchanged.”
The battle of Wanat in 2008 is being described as the ”Black Hawk Down” of Afghanistan, with the 48 American soldiers and 24 Afghan soldiers outnumbered three to one in a four-hour firefight that left nine Americans dead and 27 wounded in one of the bloodiest days of the eight-year war.