Dozens of Taliban Killed After U.S. Deaths
A battle in western Afghanistan that included airstrikes killed dozens of Taliban militants, after an insurgent ambush left three U.S. troops dead, an Afghan official said Sunday.
The hours-long battle took place Saturday in the western province of Farah after a complex attack that killed three Americans and seven Afghan troops, said Afghan army spokesman Maj. Abdul Basir Ghori.
The insurgent ambush involved two roadside bombs, gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a U.S. military spokeswoman, said Sunday. Mathias confirmed that fighting in the west continued after the ambush, but she could not provide any casualty figures.
Ghori said about 50 militants were killed in Saturday's battle, but no other Afghan officials could immediately confirm that figure.
During the clash, a coalition airstrike hit a home and killed a woman and a teenage girl, said Afghan police spokesman Raouf Ahmadi.
The fighting took place in the Bala Baluk district of Farah province, a region controlled by militants that has been the site of huge battles in the past, some that have caused high numbers of civilian casualties.
Saturday's violence came the same day Afghan officials said .
Violence has risen steadily across Afghanistan the last three years, and militants now control wide swaths of the countryside. The U.S. and NATO have a record number of troops in the country, and the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is soon likely to request thousands more.
Support for the eight-year war is waning in the United States and Europe as troop deaths rise and Taliban attacks spike. A record number of U.S. and NATO troops have died in Afghanistan already this year.
Report: Germany Ponders Afghan Strategy
Germany's Foreign Ministry advocates preparing the ground over the next four years for a withdrawal from Afghanistan, with police and army training being stepped up, according to a report Sunday.
Chancellor Angela Merkel last week joined the French and British leaders in calling for a new international conference on Afghanistan, hoping to accelerate and improve training of local forces and lay out a timetable in which Afghans can take back full control of their war-battered country.
A paper drawn up by the Foreign Ministry says the conference should "not satisfy itself with vague targets," the weekly Der Spiegel reported.
It added that that, during Germany's next four-year parliamentary term, "the foundations for the withdrawal from Afghanistan" should be laid, the report added - though it mentioned no actual withdrawal date.
The strategy would involve extra police officers being trained in the volatile northern Kunduz region and the number of Germans training the Afghan army being increased, Der Spiegel said.
The paper calls for a German base in Faizabad to be turned into a "training center for security forces and civilian administration" by 2011, it reported, and advocates support for a "reintegration fund" that would allow Taliban supporters to return to mainstream society.
The Foreign Ministry confirmed the existence of an internal strategy paper drawn up for Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on perspectives for a successful conclusion of the German mission, but would not comment on its contents or those of Der Spiegel's report.
Germany's mission in Afghanistan, where it has more than 4,200 troops, has been put in the spotlight by a German-ordered Sept. 4 airstrike near Kunduz in which civilians appear to have died.
Both Merkel and Steinmeier, her challenger in Germany's Sept. 27 elections, say they won't accept "premature judgments" on the strike.
Still, "such a military action naturally influences reconstruction," Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul was quoted as telling Der Spiegel, adding that "now the work will become even more difficult."