9 killed in Afghan ambush

Five U.S. Army soldiers and a U.S. Marine were killed in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan, military officials said Saturday, raising the American death toll in the country to 108 in a year that has become the deadliest since the war began six years ago.

The six service members, who were serving as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, were on a foot patrol Friday with Afghan soldiers when they came under fire from small arms and grenade launchers, alliance officials said.

Three Afghan soldiers also were killed in the ambush, which NATO officials described as a complex attack that came from multiple positions.

The previous deadliest year for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was 2005, when 99 were killed, according to icasualties.org. Last year, 98 U.S. military personnel died as part of the Afghanistan mission.

The Afghan ambush came the same week in which 2007 also became the deadliest year for U.S. forces in Iraq. There, however, American casualties have dropped dramatically over the last four months.

In Afghanistan, violence has steadily risen over the course of the year as a resurgent Taliban, which is believed to have rebuilt in bases along the Afghan-Pakistan border, has launched a series of attacks in eastern and southern provinces.

Just last week, a rare suicide bombing in northern Afghanistan killed 68 people, including six lawmakers, in the deadliest such attack since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

Senior military officials have said there have been waves of attacks around the key southern city of Kandahar, long a Taliban stronghold, including a major attack there earlier this month.

But at a Pentagon news conference Friday, before the latest U.S. deaths were made public, a top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the number of such frontal attacks had been decreasing in recent months, even as the number of roadside blasts and suicide bombings were on the rise.

“The direct conflict that occurs, what we call ‘troops in contact,’ is actually decreasing as the Taliban suffers defeats,” said Army Brig. Gen. Robert E. Livingston Jr., the officer in charge of training Afghan security forces. “It again reflects that desperation, because we’re seeing more and more soft targets attacked versus military installation or coalition forces.”

The wave of violence in Afghanistan comes amid growing concern over the NATO-led mission there. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates repeatedly has called on European and other allies to do more to shore up the operation despite the fact that troop levels there are now at all-time highs. There are approximately 54,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, about half of them American.

U.S. officials have been equally frustrated over Pakistan’s failure to tamp down Taliban and Al Qaeda activities on its side of the border. Gates said he was concerned that the recent turmoil in Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf has declared emergency rule, could further hamper Pakistani anti-terrorism efforts.

Thus far however, U.S. commanders insist there have been no noticeable changes along the border.

Army Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, the head of operations for the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently that military planners were anticipating stepped-up violence before the winter snows, which traditionally end the Afghan fighting season.

“With the bad weather imminent, there is perhaps a desire on the part of Taliban and other leaders to try to make, if you will, one last offensive push,” Ham said. “We may be seeing some part of that in these past few weeks, and that may continue for another few weeks.”

Friday’s ambush was the biggest loss of U.S. life in Afghanistan since February, when eight were killed in the crash of a Chinook helicopter. Alliance officials said eight NATO and 11 Afghan soldiers were wounded in the ambush.

Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, noted the U.S. deaths in Afghanistan while accompanying President Bush in Crawford, Texas.

“Our troops are facing a ferocious and determined enemy -- and our strategy is to take the fight to them, to be on the offense,” Perino said. “And because of their courage and bravery, we have sustained casualties. The president greatly appreciates the sacrifice of our military and their families, and he will express that tomorrow as he honors our nation’s veterans.”

peter.spiegel@latimes.com