KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, (Reuters) – An insurgent attack in south Afghanistan killed at least six foreign troops and two Afghan soldiers today, officials said, days before Washington is due to complete a review of its war strategy.
General Abdul Hameed, the commander of the Afghan army in the south, said a suicide car bomber staged the attack outside a U.S. base in Kandahar province, the heartland of Taliban insurgents.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said six troops had been killed in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan but declined to give any details or confirm if it was the same incident.
The deaths come days before U.S. President Barack Obama is due to complete a review of his Afghanistan war strategy and underline the rising tide of violence. Violence is at its worst across Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, with military and civilian casualties at record highs.
In a further blow for Obama, his special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke, was in critical condition on Saturday after surgery to repair a tear in his aorta. The attack in the south had the highest toll in a single battlefield incident since a May suicide bomb near a military convoy in Kabul that also killed six.
A border policeman shot dead six U.S. soldiers last month, but he was on a training exercise with the troops he killed, and already inside their security cordon when he opened fire.
Hameed said the bomber had tried to enter the base but his vehicle detonated at a gate outside, wounding three Afghans and four foreign soldiers, in addition to those killed.
It was not clear whether the device had gone off prematurely or whether the bomber had been killed by guards, he added.
Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the Islamist group.
“It was one of our suicide bombers, who used a minibus for this attack on the base,” he told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.