Militant fighters streaming from a village and a mosque attacked a pair of remote outposts near the Pakistan border, killing eight American soldiers and as many as seven Afghan forces in one of the fiercest attacks of the troubled eight-year war. The Taliban claimed responsibility. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility and said 35 Afghan police are in Taliban custody, including the district chief, and that a council would decide their fates. Badar said no Afghan police were missing. The raid began around dawn Saturday morning and lasted several hours, said Jamaludin Badar, governor of Nuristan province. Badar said the two outposts were on a hill {mdash} one on top and one at the foot of the slope -- flanked by the village on one side and the mosque on the other. The U.S. military statement said the Americans and Afghans repelled the attack by tribal fighters and inflicted heavy enemy casualties. This was a complex attack in a difficult area, Col. Randy George, the area commander, said in the U.S. statement. Both the U.S. and Afghan soldiers fought bravely together. Eight foreign soldiers killed in a firefight in eastern Afghanistan were American, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said Sunday. "I can confirm that they were all American," an ISAF spokesman in Kabul said media, referring to an attack on Saturday in Nuristan province in which two members of the Afghan National Security Forces were also killed. The incident was the deadliest attack suffered by international forces in more than a year. Ten French troops were killed in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan in August 2008. A growing insurgency in Afghanistan has made 2009 the worst year for foreign fatalities since the start of military action that ousted the hardline Islamist Taliban regime nearly eight years ago. Some 394 soldiers have died so far this year, 236 of them American, according to an AFP toll based on a tally of coalition deaths by the independent icasualties.org website. The United States contributes the most of the 100,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. The top commander of US and NATO forces, General Stanley McChrystal, has reportedly asked for 40,000 extra soldiers for the country.