Two US soldiers killed in Taliban attack in Afghan battleground province

Two US soldiers were killed and two others were wounded fighting Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan's Kunduz province, US military officials announced on 3 November.

The attack happened during a "train, advise, assist" mission with Afghan forces to "clear a Taliban position and disrupt the group's operation", the American officials reportedly explained.

An Afghan police official said as many as 26 civilians, including members of a Taliban fighter's family, died in the assault too, the Associated Press reported.

General Qasim Jangalbagh of Kunduz province also said the raid by US and Afghan forces killed 65 Taliban fighters, including two commanders for the insurgency.

Both NATO and the Pentagon declined to immediately give further details about the operation or discuss the civilian casualties, the AP said.

Kunduz, in the northern part of the country, has been a battleground between Afghan forces and the Taliban fighters for over a year.

The Taliban militants most recently launched an attack on the city on 3 October 2016, but within a few days, the city was back under Afghan forces control. Taliban fighters remain active in the area.

A Taliban group captured the city for two days in September 2015. On 3 October 2015, the US military bombed a hospital operated by Medicins Sans Frontiers, killing 19 people, in what was meant to be an airstrike targeting the Taliban fighters. The UN condemned the bombing as "inexcusable and possibly even criminal".

There are around 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan as part of the NATO mission in the country, a conflict from which the US cannot seem to withdraw despite President Barack Obama's pledge of doing so.