KABUL: Two American service members were killed during an operation in Afghanistan on Friday, the US and Nato forces said, providing no other details on the combat deaths.

The fatalities, which bring to four the number of US soldiers killed so far this year in Afghanistan, underscore the difficulties in bringing peace to the war-wrecked country even as Washington has stepped up efforts to find a way to end the 17-year war, America’s longest.

The US and Nato Resolute Support mission said the names of the service members killed in action were being withheld until after notification of the next of kin, in accordance with US Department of Defence policy.

The statement also did not specify the location of the combat or say who the soldiers were fighting.

“The incident is under investigation and we have no additional information to provide,” said Sgt. 1st Class Debra Richardson, a Resolute Support spokeswoman.

A Taliban statement later in the day said insurgents engaged in heavy fighting with Afghan and US forces overnight in the northern city of Kunduz. Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said the fighting was still underway; he claimed the insurgents had killed as many as three Americans and nine Afghan commandos.

The insurgents often exaggerate their battlefield claims and it was impossible to confirm whether the fighting Mujahid was referring to was the same combat in which the two US service members were killed.

An Afghan lawmaker from Kunduz province, Abdul Wodood Payman, said there was heavy fighting overnight in the Kunduz neighbourhood of Taluka, where jet fighters roared overhead and bombings could be heard. He had no additional information.

There are about 14,000 US forces in Afghanistan, supporting embattled Afghan forces as they struggle on two fronts facing a resurgent Taliban who now hold sway over almost half the country and also the militant Islamic State group, which has sought to expand its footprint in Afghanistan even as its self-proclaimed “caliphate” has crumbled in Syria and Iraq.

In 2001, after the Sept 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the US invaded Afghanistan and ousted the ruling Taliban regime in a matter of weeks. But the Taliban subsequently regrouped while Washington shifted its attention to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, and by 2009, the war had become a stalemate.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2019