8 U.S. troops die in Afghan attacks

In one of the deadliest 24-hour spans in recent weeks for American forces, eight U.S. soldiers were killed in three separate attacks in southern Afghanistan late Tuesday and Wednesday, including a coordinated assault on an Afghan elite police headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar.

In the first attack, an insurgent rammed his explosives-filled car into the main gate of the Afghan police compound late Tuesday night while other militants opened fire with automatic rifles and rocket launchers, NATO and Afghan authorities said. Three U.S. troops were killed, along with an Afghan police officer and five Afghan civilian workers.

Members of the elite police force, known as the Afghan National Civil Order Police, had recently been assigned to Kandahar to establish new checkpoints throughout the city, the birthplace of the Taliban movement and an area regarded as crucial in the U.S. military’s strategy to bring an end to nine years of war in Afghanistan.

Thousands of troops are being deployed throughout Kandahar province in a bid to wrest control of the region from the Taliban and allow the start of social service and infrastructure projects that can boost Afghans’ confidence in President Hamid Karzai’s weak civilian government.

NATO soldiers and Afghan police were able to keep insurgents from breaching the compound, the alliance said. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi disputed that, saying insurgents managed to break into the compound and battle troops and police for more than an hour.

Ahmadi said the car bomber and another insurgent died, but three others escaped.

On Wednesday, four more U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization spokeswoman said. The eighth U.S. service member was killed during a small-arms attack, also in southern Afghanistan. The spokeswoman would not say specifically where the attacks occurred and had no further details.

The death toll has grown with the Obama administration’s deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan this year and stepped-up military operations in the south, with 2010 on track to be the deadliest year yet for U.S. and other international troops.

The latest violence raised to 238 the number of U.S. troops killed as a result of the Afghan war in 2010 with the year slightly more than half over, compared with 317 for all of last year, according to the independent website icasualties.org.

The death toll for international troops (including U.S.) this year has risen to 369, compared with 521 for all of last year.

Roadside bombs continue to be one of the deadliest weapons used against international forces. But other hazards are also taking their toll, including firefights, helicopter crashes, ambushes and sniper fire.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com