Militants kill 8 US soldiers and seven Afghans

MILITANT fighters streaming from an Afghan village and a mosque attacked a pair of remote outposts near the Pakistani border, killing eight US soldiers and as many as seven Afghan forces in one of the fiercest battles of the eight-year war.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack for coalition forces since a similar raid in July 2008 killed nine American soldiers in the same mountainous region known as an al-Qaida haven.

The US has already said it plans to pull its soldiers from the isolated area to focus on Afghan population centres.