The Taleban claimed to be flying its flag over the town of Kamdesh in eastern Afghanistan yesterday after the US military withdrew from an outpost that was all but overrun by more than 300 insurgents last weekend.

As details emerged of the deadliest attack on US forces in 15 months Nato confirmed that it had withdrawn from Camp Keating in Nuristan but insisted that the pullout was part of a relocation of troops to places with larger populations, which was planned weeks ago.

The Taleban claimed victory nonetheless. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman, said that the US military destroyed what remained of the outpost. “This means they are not coming back,” he said. “This is another victory for Taleban. We have control of another district in eastern Afghanistan.”

Soldiers who were inside the isolated base and helicopter pilots who came to their rescue have spoken of the attack that left eight Americans dead and 24 wounded. They told ABC News that they had never seen such a large insurgent force and that by the time the fighting ended the survivors had nothing left “except the clothes off their backs and the weapons in their hands”.

The base, built in 2006 in a steep valley near the Pakistan border, was always vulnerable to attack by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire from the surrounding mountainsides but had never been assaulted on such a scale.

The insurgents had reportedly stockpiled weapons in a mosque. They attacked before dawn, firing machineguns from the slopes. They almost immediately plunged the base into darkness by destroying the generator and soon managed to set it ablaze.

The garrison had already been reduced as part of the pullout plan. General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, has been closing bases as part of his counter-insurgency strategy to protect Afghans from the Taleban. The danger, however, is that large areas of the country would inevitably fall under Taleban control.

The remaining American and Afghan soldiers in Camp Keating summoned air support. “We were basically surrounded 360 degrees,” said First Lieutenant Cason Shrode, 24, who was directing the airpower from the operations centre at the base. “We had fixed wing [jets] 20 minutes after the fight started. We had helicopters 20 minutes later . . . We had so many different assets up in the air . . . they were stacked on so many different levels.”

Chief Warrant Officer Chad Bardwell, 35, who piloted an Apache helicopter gunship, told ABC that “when we first showed up and put our sensors on Keating, it was just kind of shock . . . All the amount of flames and the smoke and to see that amount of [enemy] personnel running outside of their wire.”

Chief Warrant Officer Ross Lewallen, his co-pilot, added: “I’ve been on three deployments and I’ve never seen that large a force attacking one static position.” He said that dozens of insurgents encircled the blazing camp.

The battle raged all day. The US pilots struggled to find the insurgents because of the smoke and rugged landscape.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewallen said: “There are a lot of rocks and a lot of cover. You really can’t detect the enemy until they start moving again.”

Three Apaches were hit but the sky clouded over during the afternoon, which helped the pilots. “We were able to see some of the larger muzzle flashes that were a little higher in the mountains,” Chief Warrant Officer Lewallen said. “We started to eliminate the larger weapons.”

Inside the base soldiers gave blood to help injured comrades as the casualities mounted but medevac helicopters were unable to land until after dark in case the insurgents had machineguns trained on the landing zone. Even then, according to ABC, wounded soldiers insisted on staying to fight.

The air power eventually prevailed but not before most of the base burnt down.

Nato claims that more than 100 insurgents were killed and says that local tribal militia were helped by local Taleban and an insurgent group called Hezb-e-Islami, led by the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

The eight dead soldiers were aged between 21 and 30 and were all from 4th Infantry Division, based at Fort Carson, Colorado.

(martin fletcher, The Times, 10October2009)

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