Kabul:
Insurgents wearing suicide vests on Saturday stormed a major NATO base in eastern Afghanistan, with six of them dying in a hail of gunfire before they could penetrate the defenses. Ten people including three children died in a separate bombing in the north.
The attacks -- in Jalalabad in the east and Kunduz province in the north -- show the insurgents' fighting spirit has not been broken despite a surge of US troops and firepower.
They also demonstrate the guerrillas are capable of striking outside their traditional southern strongholds of Kandahar and Helmand provinces that are the focus of the US surge.
NATO also reported that insurgents killed three coalition service members Saturday in southern Afghanistan, but it did not provide further details or nationalities. So far this year, 629 U.S. and international troops have died in Afghanistan, according to a count by The Associated Press.
The violence underscored continued instability in the country a week before a NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal, to discuss shifting responsibility for security to Afghan forces. President Barack Obama also is due to present a review of his war strategy next month.
The Taliban have targeted several US and NATO installations in recent years with attacks that often do little damage but serve as a reminder that the insurgents are able to strike at the core of the international mission and to enjoy relative freedom of movement across the country despite coalition offensives and an infusion of thousands additional international forces.
Afghan and coalition troops have killed and captured hundreds of insurgents in recent months as they target midlevel commanders in their effort break the back of the insurgency. They also have disrupted insurgent supply routes, especially in the south.
Saturday's attempted ambush of the base in Jalalabad, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of Kabul on the main road between the Afghan capital and the Pakistan border, was the second against it in five months.
Several gunmen attacked an Afghan army checkpoint outside the heavily fortified coalition base at dawn, sparking a gunbattle that lasted at least two hours as NATO helicopters fired from above.
Six insurgents were killed, including two who were wearing explosives-laden suicide vests, according to the international military coalition. No NATO or Afghan troops were killed, the coalition said.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said there were 14 attackers and 11 of them were killed, though the insurgent group typically gives inflated numbers.
An Associated Press photographer at the scene saw three dead bodies laid out, all in Afghan army uniforms, which militants often wear as a disguise. An AK-47 assault rifle, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and a grenade were laid out nearby.
The same base was targeted in June with a car bomb, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons although the militants again failed to breach its defenses. Eight militants were killed in that attack.
NATO said it would not be deterred by the attack, the second against an eastern outpost in the past two weeks. Insurgents attacked an observation post in Paktika province on Oct. 30, and NATO said at least 40 Taliban fighters were killed before the attackers retreated.
The coalition "will continue to work with our Afghan partners to establish a safe and peaceful Afghanistan," NATO spokesman US Army Col. Rafael Torres.
With NATO focusing its counterinsurgency campaign in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, the security situation in the east and north has steadily been deteriorating.
On May 18, a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy in the capital, killing 18 people including six NATO service members -- five Americans and a Canadian. The next day, dozens of Taliban militants attacked the main US military base, Bagram Air Field, killing an American contractor in fighting that lasted more than eight hours.
Insurgents often are repelled before they can inflict much damage, but not always.
In one of the worst ground attacks of the war, hundreds of insurgents stormed a remote outpost in the mountainous Nuristan province near the Pakistan border on October 3, 2009, killing eight Americans and three Afghan soldiers. Some 150 insurgents also were killed in the fighting that ensued.
The bomb in Kunduz was hidden in a motorbike and apparently targeted a senior police officer as he drove by in the Imam Sahib district. Commander Mohammad Manan and one of his bodyguards were among those killed, said Abdul Qayum Ebrahimi, the district police chief.