KABUL: One US soldier and seven suspected Taliban militants were killed Friday after an ambush on a joint US-Afghan patrol near Lawara in southeastern Afghanistan, the US military said. Three US soldiers were also wounded in the fighting. Two were evacuated to a nearby forward operating base and the third was treated and returned to duty at the scene in Paktika province, the US military said in a statement. "We are deeply saddened by the loss of our soldier and will honour him by continuing to take the fight to the enemy," US Army Brigadier General Jack Sterling said in the statement. The name of the deceased was being withheld pending notification of next-of-kin, the statement said."Coalition forces reported the enemy fleeing shortly after the ambush began. Coalition fixed- and rotary-wing attack aircraft and artillery responded to the attack," it added. The attack comes amid a recent wave of violence blamed on remnants of the hardline Islamic Taliban, whom the Afghan government accuses of plotting with Al Qaeda militants to derail legislative elections due in September.
On Wednesday two US soldiers were killed at the forward operating base at Shkin, also in Paktika province, near the Pakistani border, when a mortar bomb crashed into the compound. More than 30 US service members have now died in Afghanistan this year, 15 of whom were killed when a Chinook crashed in bad weather in April. It was the worst American air crash since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.