The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Kabul

Taliban insurgents killed six troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and three Afghan soldiers in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan, an ISAF spokesman said on Saturday.

It is unusual for such a large number of foreign and Afghan forces to be killed in a single engagement in Afghanistan where ISAF and U.S.-led coalition troops, backed by air power, routinely inflict heavy losses on Taliban insurgents.

"I have sad news to report from regional command east where six ISAF soldiers and three Afghan army were killed by Taliban insurgents in an ambush yesterday," Brigadier General Carlos Branco told a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Eight ISAF troops and 11 Afghan soldiers were also wounded in the fighting, which began on Friday when insurgents ambushed their patrol with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire as the troops were returning from a meeting with local elders.

It was the heaviest loss suffered by ISAF troops in Afghanistan in several months.

Most ISAF troops based in the east of the country are American, but the force was withholding confirmation of the nationalities of the dead soldiers pending notification of next of kin.

Elsewhere, a suicide bomber killed one civilian and wounded three other people in the northern province of Kunduz on Saturday, a provincial security official said.