Four service members were killed in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the same day the Obama administration announced it hopes to jumpstart peace talks with the country’s Taliban insurgency.
The U.S.-led coalition issued a statement early Wednesday saying the deaths followed an “indirect fire” attack, but did not identify the soldiers or their nationalities.
G-8 summit, protests rock Brazil, Britain’s Royal Ascot and more.
Latest stories from Foreign
Haq Nawaz Khan
Suicide bombers strike Shiite mosque in Iraqi capital; blast at funeral in northwestern Pakistan kills 29.
William Booth and Ruth Eglash
As the United States seeks to restart peace talks, Israeli ministers disagree on whether the idea is dead or alive.
Scott Wilson
In a concession to Russia, Obama and European leaders do not call for Bashar al-Assad to step down.
Bradley Brooks
Thousands of demonstrators flooded into a square in Brazil’s economic hub, Sao Paulo, for the latest in a historic wave of protests against the shoddy state of public services.
Tim Craig
The transfer of responsibility for securing Afghanistan is soon marred by a bombing in the capital.
The Afghan Taliban took responsibility for the attack, saying the group targeted U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield and fired a rocket into the sprawling military base. Bagram, about 30 miles from Kabul, often comes under rocket attack, but such strikes are rarely deadly.
After years of conflict and in preparation for coalition troops to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the White House announced it will send a high-level delegation to Qatar to meet with Taliban representatives.
The meeting, scheduled for Thursday, is designed to gauge whether formal talks are possible between the Taliban and Afghanistan’s political and military leadership.
According to icasualties.org, 2,239 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the war began nearly a dozen years ago. Coalition fatalities peaked in 2010, when 499 U.S. troops lost their lives, but the deadliest stretch of the war continued through last year, when 310 American fatalities were reported.
U.S. causalities have been on the decline this year as many of the 68,000 American troops remaining in the country return to their bases while Afghanistan's military steps into the lead on combat operations.
But the insurgency has still proven capable of inflicting losses, including the deaths of seven U.S. troops in a roadside bombing in May.
The U.S.-led coalition issued a statement early Wednesday saying the deaths followed an “indirect fire” attack, but did not identify the soldiers or their nationalities.
G-8 summit, protests rock Brazil, Britain’s Royal Ascot and more.
Latest stories from Foreign
Haq Nawaz Khan
Suicide bombers strike Shiite mosque in Iraqi capital; blast at funeral in northwestern Pakistan kills 29.
William Booth and Ruth Eglash As the United States seeks to restart peace talks, Israeli ministers disagree on whether the idea is dead or alive.
Scott Wilson In a concession to Russia, Obama and European leaders do not call for Bashar al-Assad to step down.
Bradley Brooks Thousands of demonstrators flooded into a square in Brazil’s economic hub, Sao Paulo, for the latest in a historic wave of protests against the shoddy state of public services.
Tim Craig The transfer of responsibility for securing Afghanistan is soon marred by a bombing in the capital.
The Afghan Taliban took responsibility for the attack, saying the group targeted U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield and fired a rocket into the sprawling military base. Bagram, about 30 miles from Kabul, often comes under rocket attack, but such strikes are rarely deadly.
After years of conflict and in preparation for coalition troops to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the White House announced it will send a high-level delegation to Qatar to meet with Taliban representatives.
The meeting, scheduled for Thursday, is designed to gauge whether formal talks are possible between the Taliban and Afghanistan’s political and military leadership.
According to icasualties.org, 2,239 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the war began nearly a dozen years ago. Coalition fatalities peaked in 2010, when 499 U.S. troops lost their lives, but the deadliest stretch of the war continued through last year, when 310 American fatalities were reported.
U.S. causalities have been on the decline this year as many of the 68,000 American troops remaining in the country return to their bases while Afghanistan's military steps into the lead on combat operations.
But the insurgency has still proven capable of inflicting losses, including the deaths of seven U.S. troops in a roadside bombing in May.