Pat Dollard | Young Americans

(International Herald Trib)

KABUL: President Nicolas Sarkozy of France visited a military chapel in Kabul on Wednesday where the bodies of 10 French soldiers killed in battle lay before they were to be flown home. Clashes in the east killed 19 Taliban fighters, officials said.

Sarkozy spoke to French troops from units that had lost several of the 10 soldiers killed in a fierce Taliban ambush and firefight in mountains about 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, east of Kabul on Monday. Sarkozy was greeted by a color guard and the playing of the French national anthem at the Kabul NATO base.

The French president also visited some of the 21 soldiers wounded in the battle. He told a group of about 200 soldiers that France must learn lessons from the attack and change its procedures.

“Even though the toll is so high, you should be proud of what you are doing. The work that you’re doing here is indispensable,” Sarkozy told the troops. “We’re gong to make sure that the means are put in place to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

Coffins of French soldiers killed in Afghanistan are carried during a funeral ceremony at Les Invalides, in Paris, Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008. 10 French soldiers were killed and 21 injured in a fierce Taliban ambush and firefight in mountains about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Kabul on Monday.

Sarkozy also met with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the presidential palace. Karzai said he wanted to “express the condolences and the pain of the Afghan people to the French people for the loss that they have suffered.”

Karzai attributed the recent rise in violence in his country to the lack of attention that NATO and Afghanistan has paid to the militants’ sanctuaries and training grounds, a clear reference to Pakistan’s tribal areas.

“Unless we do that, we will continue to suffer,” Karzai said.

The French soldiers were on a reconnaissance mission when they were ambushed by a force of about 100 militants in the mountains of Surobi. France’s chief of staff, General Jean-Louis Georgelin, said most of the French casualties came in the minutes after the soldiers climbed a mountain pass.

Defense Minister Hervé Morin said about 30 militants were killed and 30 wounded. Taliban fighters and militants allied to the renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar operate in Surobi.

It was the deadliest attack on international troops in Afghanistan since June 2005, when 16 American soldiers were killed in the downing of their helicopter by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Militants are showing greater determination to confront U.S. and NATO troops in their attempt to wrest back the control they lost nearly seven years ago. In the latest violence, at least 19 Taliban fighters were killed in two clashes in the eastern provinces of Khost and Paktia.

More than 3,400 people - mostly militants - have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to NATO and Afghan officials.