An attack in south Afghanistan has left at at least six foreign troops and two Afghan soldiers dead.
General Abdul Hameed, commander of the Afghan army in the south, said a suicide car bomber staged the attack outside a US base in Kandahar province, the heartland of Taliban insurgents.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said six troops were killed in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan but declined to give any details or confirm if it was the same incident.
The deaths, underlining the rising tide of violence, come days before US President Barack Obama unveils a White House-led review of his Afghanistan war strategy.
Violence is at its worst across the rugged country since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, with military and civilian casualties at record highs.
The attack in the south had the highest toll in a single battlefield incident since a May suicide bomb near a military convoy in Kabul that also killed six.
Intensified fighting killed more than 690 foreign troops in 2010, around one third of the total of 2,260 who have died in more than nine years of conflict. June was the bloodiest month ever for foreign forces in Afghanistan, with 103 deaths.
The rise in troop deaths is a major challenge for Mr Obama and his administration, who are under pressure to find an exit from an increasingly unpopular war.
NATO leaders agreed at a summit in Lisbon last month to end combat operations and give security enforcement to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.
Critics say the 2014 target set by Karzai is too ambitious and point to the shortcomings in Afghanistan's security forces.
