Meanwhile...

...in the land that time and the Bush administration forgot.

American and Afghan soldiers inside the base were hit by flying fragments from bullets, grenades and mortar shells that insurgents fired from houses, shops and a mosque in a village within a few hundred yards of the base, several officials said.

At the lightly fortified observation post nearby, American soldiers came under heavy fire from militants streaming through farmland under cover of darkness. Most of the American casualties took place there, a senior American military official said.

American warplanes, attack helicopters and long-range artillery were urgently summoned to help repel the militants.

But the insurgents made it so far that a few of their corpses were found inside the base’s earthen barriers, and others were lying around it, Tamim Nuristani, a former governor in the region, said after talking to officials in the district.

The attack was unusually bold. Taliban and other militants in Afghanistan rarely attack better-armed allied forces head on, preferring suicide bombs and hit-and-run ambushes against foot patrols and convoys. But they have made occasional attempts to overrun lightly staffed or otherwise vulnerable outposts.