Top Indian diplomat in Afghanistan after blast

KABUL, (Reuters) – India’s top diplomat inspected the  site of a huge bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul yesterday but declined to assign blame for a strike that has  renewed focus on India’s tense relations with Pakistan.  

India has in the past accused Pakistan’s ISI spy agency of  being behind attacks on Indian interests in Afghanistan. An  attack on the same Kabul embassy last year killed 58 people.  

Thursday’s blast killed 17 people but harmed no embassy  staff. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Pakistan condemned  it.  

Separately, U.S. forces said on Friday they had abandoned  remote outposts in the east of the country near the Pakistani  border, six days after Taliban fighters stormed the positions,  killing eight Americans. 

The withdrawal was part of a strategy by top NATO and U.S.  commander General Stanley McChrystal to redeploy from remote  areas to population centers. Fighters have frequently responded  to such moves with attacks designed to assert control of areas  after U.S. forces pull out.  

This year has seen a dramatic rise of violence in  Afghanistan where 100,000 Western troops, two-thirds of them  American, are battling to contain an increasingly fierce  insurgency.  

In Washington, U.S. officials said the White House had been  presented with intelligence estimating that Taliban-led forces  battling U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan had grown nearly  four-fold in the past four years to roughly 25,000 from 7,000.  

U.S. President Barack Obama had a strategy session with his  national security team at the White House on Friday that was  expected to discuss a request by the U.S. military to send up  to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year.