8 Fort Carson soldiers killed in fierce Afghan fighting

In the deadliest day for Fort Carson since Vietnam, eight soldiers from the post’s 4th Brigade Combat Team died in Afghanistan on Saturday when insurgents attacked a pair of remote outposts in Nuristan province.

The Army hasn’t identified the dead, but several military sources confirmed that all eight were from the 4th Infantry Division’s 4th Brigade, which went to war in May and in recent days began withdrawing from remote areas to better provide security in cities and villages.

“My heart goes out to the families of those we have lost and to their fellow Soldiers who remained to finish this fight,” Col. Randy George, the brigade’s commander, said in a statement late Saturday. “This was a complex attack in a difficult area. Both the U.S. and Afghan Soldiers fought bravely together; I am extremely proud of their professionalism and bravery.”

Federal law bars the Army from releasing the names of the dead until 24 hours after the last next of kin is notified. Traditionally, the Army has shunned identifying units involved in deadly incidents until the Pentagon releases the names of those who were killed.

The post had lost 270 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan before Saturday’s deaths. Since the Afghanistan war began in 2001, the post’s highest number of casualties in a single incident was five, a total reached in three Iraq bombings — one in 2007 and two in 2008.

The American headquarters in Kabul said the attack began early Saturday when Nuristani tribesmen poured out of a mosque and a nearby village.

The attackers numbered in the hundreds and used machine guns and rockets to lay siege to a hilltop American position and a nearby Afghan military compound.

Days before the attack, Americans announced plans to leave the area as part of a “broader realignment to protect larger population centers,” a military news release said.

Those plans remain unchanged.

The besieged GIs called in allied aircraft, Army helicopters and artillery fire to beat back the attack. The military said the soldiers inflicted heavy enemy casualties, but lost eight Americans and two of their Afghan allies.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in Afghanistan since 2008. Afghan authorities said the insurgents included some who were driven out of the Swat valley of neighboring Pakistan after a Pakistani military offensive there last spring.

The 4th Brigade Combat Team under George has worked throughout a four-province region centered on the city of Jalalabad. The area includes some of Afghanistan’s most rugged terrain in the mountains along the Pakistan border, including the Khyber Pass.

The 3,500-soldier brigade is the first major Fort Carson combat unit to fight in Afghanistan and trained for months on the hills and ridges of the post’s training area to gain the physical stamina required for high-altitude battle.

Since arriving in Afghanistan last spring, the brigade’s achievements have included securing that nation’s presidential election, allowing thousands of locals to safely go to the polls for the first peaceful transition of power there in decades.

The brigade has also sent soldiers on long foot patrols in valleys and villages in the roadless high country in a bid to deny the insurgents refuge.

They arrived in Afghanistan as fighting there reached levels that hadn’t been seen since America’s 2001 invasion. Through September, the brigade lost 11 soldiers in Afghanistan, with the most recent deaths bringing the unit’s total to 19.

Hard fighting is nothing new for veterans in the 4th Brigade, which until 2008 was known as the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division.

In 2004, the unit was sent to Ramadi, Iraq, in the midst of an uprising by Sunni insurgents. The brigade lost 68 soldiers on the yearlong deployment, for the highest losses of any brigade at war to that point.

In 2006, the brigade returned to Iraq, taking over potions of central Baghdad at the height of sectarian battles there. The brigade managed to bring peace to several Baghdad neighborhoods, but the effort cost the lives of 45 soldiers during 15 months at war.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.