Middle East, U.s. Troops | featured news

Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year - the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war....

Most Americans want US troops out of Afghanistan and oppose a significant long-term commitment to support that nation's economy and security, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Friday.

Already tense U.S. and NATO ties with Afghanistan were dealt another blow on Wednesday with photographs appearing in an American newspaper of U.S. soldiers posing with the maimed bodies of dead Afghan insurgents.

Officials say the US mission in Afghanistan will not change in the wake of an American soldier's attack on civilians, and troops are still on course to hand over security control to Afghans by the end of 2014.

More than half of Americans support President Barack Obama's apology for U.S. troops burning copies of the Koran, an incident that triggered a spate of bloody protests and attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

TV stations aligned with Sunni and Shiite extremist groups, many of whom attacked U.S. troops, have dubbed it the "Day of Defeating the Occupier."

Eight U.S. soldiers have been charged in the death of 19-year-old Private Danny Chen, who was found shot to death in a guard tower in southern Afghanistan. It was first thought to have been a suicide, but the military's investigation found that the Asian-American had been the target of ethnic slurs and physical attacks by his fellow soldiers. Chen was found dead Oct. 3 with a gunshot wound below the chin; it's not clear from the charges whether the eight soldiers are accused of killing him or whether officials are alleging that their mistreatment of Chen led him to take his own life.

Soldiers who just returned from Iraq are among several thousand being ordered to Afghanistan in six months as part of a mission designed to beef up Afghan forces ahead of a planned 2014 U.S. military withdrawal, officials said.

The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq Sunday, ending their withdrawal after nearly nine years of war and military intervention that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta marked on Thursday the end of the U.S. war in Iraq, with the last American troops withdrawing nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.