The assaults on the sprawling Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost province
and nearby Camp Chapman, took place at 3am local time.

Camp Chapman was the scene of a major attack in December, when a suicide
bomber entered the base and killed seven CIA employees.

Major Wazir Pacha of the provincial police headquarters said insurgents used
rifles, heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and other heavy
weapons, but had been repelled.

“The area is under control, but we still need to find those hiding,” he said.

Small arms fire could still be heard in the area mid-morning, witnesses said,
while Nato helicopters patrolled overhead.

Police discovered a vehicle laden with ammunition and another packed with
explosives that had become stuck in deep mud. Major Pacha said the second
vehicle was probably intended to be used as a suicide truck bomb.

On Friday, homemade bombs killed three US soldiers in southern and eastern
Afghanistan, bringing the total number of foreign troops killed in
Afghanistan this month to 55.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — The Taliban on Sunday ordered their first public executions by stoning since their fall from power nine years ago, killing a young couple who had eloped, according to Afghan officials and a witness.

The punishment was carried out by the victims’ neighbors in a village in northern Kunduz province, according to Nadir Khan, 40, a local farmer and Taliban sympathizer, who was interviewed by telephone. Even family members were involved, both in the stoning and in tricking the couple into returning after they had fled.

Khan said that as a Taliban mullah prepared to read the judgment of a religious court, the lovers, a 25-year-old man named Khayyam and a 19-year-old woman named Siddiqa, defiantly confessed in public to their relationship.

“They said, ‘We love each other no matter what happens,’” Khan said.

The executions were the latest in a series of cases where the Taliban have imposed their harsh version of sharia law for social crimes, reminiscent of their behavior during their decade of ruling the country. In recent years, Taliban officials have sought to play down their bloody punishments of the past, as they concentrated on building up popular support.

“We see it as a sign of a new confidence on the part of the Taliban in the application of their rules, like they did in the ’90s,” said Nader Nadery, a senior commissioner on the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

The stoning deaths, along with similarly brazen attacks in northern Afghanistan, were also a sign of growing Taliban strength in parts of the country where, until recently, they had been weak or absent. In their home regions in southern Afghanistan, Nadery said, the Taliban have already been cracking down.

KABUL, Afghanistan
- One of two U.S. sailors missing in Afghanistan since last week has been confirmed dead and his body recovered, a NATO spokesman said Tuesday.

The search continues for the other missing sailor, said Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman for NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The two Navy personnel went missing Friday in the eastern province of Logar, after an armored sport utility vehicle was seen driving into a Taliban-held area. NATO officials were unable to say what they were doing in such a dangerous part of eastern Afghanistan.

The Taliban have said previously that they killed one of the two men in a firefight and captured the other.

Jim Kerr, a Colorado legislator from the Denver suburb of Littleton, said the sailor killed was his wife’s nephew, Justin McNeley, 30. He said the family learned of his death Monday. He said McNeley’s mother is in Kingman, Arizona, but declined to give her name.

Kerr told The Denver Post that McNeley, a noncommissioned officer and father of two sons, was due to return to the U.S. in August.

The Taliban have said the captured sailor is in a “safe place” where he will not be found.

In a statement, the NATO-led command said the body was recovered Sunday after an extensive search and that the coalition “holds the captors accountable for the safety and proper treatment of our missing service member.”

The only other American service member in Taliban captivity is Spc. Bowe Bergdahl of Hailey, Idaho, who disappeared June 30, 2009, in Paktika province, also in eastern Afghanistan. That area is heavily infiltrated by the Haqqani network, which has deep links to al-Qaida. Bergdahl has since appeared on videos posted on Taliban websites confirming his captivity.

New York Times reporter David Rohde was also kidnapped in Logar province while trying to make contact with a Taliban commander. He and an Afghan colleague escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity, most of it spent in Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.