Afghan outpost where 9 U.S. troops died is abandoned

American and Afghan troops have abandoned an outpost in eastern Afghanistan where U.S. forces earlier this week suffered their largest single-incident loss of life in three years, a NATO spokesman said today.

Nine American soldiers were killed and 15 others were wounded Sunday when insurgents breached the perimeter defenses of the small, newly constructed forward base near the village of Wanat, close to the border with Pakistan. Four Afghan soldiers were also wounded in the daylong assault by hundreds of insurgents, which was ultimately repelled after the defenders called in airstrikes, military authorities said.

An estimated 70 soldiers, about 45 of them Americans and the rest Afghans, were manning the outpost when it was attacked by insurgents armed with machine guns and mortars. One in five of the U.S. defenders was killed, and nearly half the survivors were wounded.

Fortifications for the forward base, which had been established only days earlier, were not yet complete when the assault took place, military officials said. Insurgents customarily carry out close surveillance of Western troop movements and may have known it was vulnerable.

In the wake of the outpost’s evacuation, Afghan authorities said the area was overrun by Taliban fighters. They added that Afghan police, who were provided with weapons by the departing Western troops, had fled.

“The area was too dangerous for police, so they spread outward to nearby villages, or went away into the neighboring province,” said Omar Sameh, a spokesman for the provincial government of Nuristan. He said about 100 insurgents were believed to be ensconced in Wanat, which insurgents used as a staging ground for the assault on the outpost.

However, another provincial spokesman told the Associated Press that police reinforcements had arrived and that Afghan authorities had regained control of the village.

The outpost attack pointed up the growing strength of the insurgency, more than six years after a U.S.-led invasion drove the Taliban from power.

Military officials say an upsurge in violence over the past two months is largely the result of aggressive pursuit of militants by Western troops during the summertime “fighting season,” when the snows have melted in the mountains.

But some local Afghan authorities and outside analysts say the insurgents appear to be gaining the upper hand in remote areas, particularly those abutting the rugged border with Pakistan.

American troops manning the forward base that was attacked were under the command of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. An ISAF spokesman, British Royal Navy Capt. Michael Finney, did not return repeated calls requesting comment on the status of the outpost, but North Atlantic Treaty Organization spokesman Mark Laity confirmed that it had been abandoned.

“They vacated the base, but not the area,” said Laity, adding that active counterinsurgency measures would continue in the area surrounding the outpost, in Nuristan and Kunar provinces.

At the time of the attack, ISAF described the forward base as located in Kunar province, but Afghan officials and some Western experts said Wanat, sometimes spelled Want, lies in Nuristan province. ISAF’s press office said the provincial frontier was poorly demarcated.

Laity declined to link the outpost’s dismantling to the attack, saying such forward bases are set up and removed at will.

NATO also denied reports by some Afghan officials that about 30 civilians were killed in U.S. airstrikes following the outpost attack. The area where the deaths reportedly occurred is more than 30 miles from Wanat, ISAF said in a statement today.

The outpost attack heightened tensions amid what NATO officials describe as a substantial increase in cross-border attacks from Pakistan in the past few months.

NATO reported today that its forces a day earlier had carried out artillery and airstrikes against insurgents inside Pakistan who fired across the border. It said the counterattack was coordinated with Pakistani authorities.

In May, Pakistan was infuriated by a U.S. strike that killed 11 paramilitary troops on its side of the border. The Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai has made a series of sharply worded protests to Pakistan about cross-border incursions and other attacks. This week, it suspended a series of upcoming meetings with Pakistan in protest. The subjects were to have included border cooperation.

 laura.king@latimes.com

Special correspondent Faiez reported from Kabul and Times staff writer King from Istanbul.