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Insurgents breached U.S. outpost in battle

Coalition forces were able to regain control. The Afghan incident raises troubling issues.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Insurgents fought their way inside an American base in Afghanistan last weekend in a rare security breach before they were driven back under heavy fire during the deadliest battle for U.S. troops in more than a year, a U.S. official said yesterday.

The bold assault raised serious questions about the security of thinly manned outposts spread across the troubled nation's volatile border region with Pakistan, and reflects growing insurgent resolve.

It comes as pressure is building on the Obama administration to decide a way forward in the grinding conflict.

Last night, a large blast sounded in the center of Afghanistan's capital and a plume of smoke was seen rising from a site in downtown Kabul. Further details were not immediately available. The Afghan capital has been hit several times in recent months by suicide bombers and roadside bombs. The attacks usually target international military forces or government installations, but Afghan businesses and civilians are also often killed or injured.

Saturday's nearly six-hour battle in the mountainous Kamdesh district, near the eastern border with Pakistan, left eight American and three Afghan soldiers dead - one of the heaviest U.S. losses of life in a single battle since the war began.

NATO says about 100 insurgents were also killed.

Most U.S. installations in Iraq and Afghanistan are guarded with rings of razor wire, huge sand-filled barriers, blast walls, and security cameras. It is rare - almost unheard of - for insurgents to breach such defenses.

Maj. T.G. Taylor, an American public affairs officer, said it was unclear how the attackers penetrated the base or how many there were.

Taylor said that 24 Americans and 10 Afghan soldiers were wounded during the fighting. Large portions of the base burned down, probably from incoming rocket and machine-gun fire, he said.

The evening before the attack, insurgents made up mostly of local Nuristani fighters began warning villagers "that something was going to go down and asked them to evacuate," Taylor said in an interview from nearby Jalalabad.

It is unclear whether civilians fled, but local police units abandoned the village - nearly all except the police chief who was later executed.

The assault began around dawn Saturday.

About 200 fighters bombarded a joint U.S.-Afghan army outpost with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar shells. Fire came from three sides simultaneously - including a local mosque they took over, buildings in the village, and high ground above the outpost.

Insurgents also attacked an observation post perched on a ridge above manned by another American platoon.

Nuristan Gov. Jamaludin Badar said that within the first minute alone, militants unleashed 32 rockets and four artillery shells.

"They were having trouble identifying the location of the attackers," Badar said of Afghan troops defending the bases. "They were having trouble figuring out where the fire was coming from."

Only three American platoons were deployed at the two posts, mostly troops from Task Force Mountain Warrior of the Fourth Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Infantry Division, based at Fort Carson outside Colorado Springs. U.S. infantry platoons ordinarily number 30 to 40 soldiers.

Badar said that several Afghan army checkpoints in Kamdesh were overrun.

Coalition forces fended off the assault with "a combination of close air support and small-arms fire," Taylor said. NATO officials have said that the coalition used artillery and helicopter gunships.

But the worst of the battle came when attackers were able to "breach the perimeter of one of the bases and get inside," Taylor said. "They got a foothold on the base. But coalition and Afghan national army forces consolidated their positions, retook the parts of the base the enemy was on, and reestablished security."