Afghan attacks kill 8 US troops

July 15, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan

American forces suffered a deadly 24 hours in Afghanistan, with eight troops killed in attacks including an audacious Taliban raid on a police compound in the key southern city of Kandahar, officials said Wednesday.

The U.S. and its coalition allies have warned that violence and troop casualties are likely to mount this summer as thousands of new forces fan out across southern insurgent strongholds in a bid to turn around the nearly 9-year-long war.

However, a top U.S. commander in the south said Wednesday that the new operation should start reducing violence in coming months.

So far in July, 45 coalition troops have died in Afghanistan, 33 of them Americans, continuing the upward trend of the previous month, which was the war’s deadliest for the NATO-led force, with 103 international soldiers killed.

A suicide attacker slammed a car bomb into the gate of the headquarters of the elite Afghan National Civil Order Police late Tuesday in Kandahar, the international force said. Minutes later, insurgents opened fire with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Three U.S. troops, an Afghan policeman and five civilians — three interpreters and two security guards — died in the attack, but NATO said the insurgents failed to enter the compound.

Four more American troops were killed elsewhere in the south Wednesday by a roadside bomb, and one more U.S. service member died the same day of wounds from a gunbattle, also in the south. NATO gave no further details of those attacks.

The special Civil Order Police had only recently sent 600 more officers to Kandahar to set up checkpoints along with international forces to try to secure the south’s largest city, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban.