KABUL (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed sadness Wednesday over the killing of 10 French soldiers, saying after talks with his French counterpart that the fight against extremists needed more attention. Karzai met his French President Nicolas Sarkozy in his palace just before the French leader left Afghanistan after a quick visit to support French soldiers following the deadly Taliban ambush and clashes on Monday and Tuesday. "I want to express ... the condolences and the pain of the Afghan people to the French people for the loss that they suffered," he told reporters after meeting Sarkozy. "France has been a great friend of Afghanistan and a great supporter of Afghanistan, and we are tremendously saddened and shaken." Karzai reiterated calls for his international military partners to focus on extremist sanctuaries and support networks he says are based primarily across the border in Pakistan, instead of only fighting rebels in Afghanistan. "The rise in violence is attributed directly to our lack of attention - the allies and all of us - to the sanctuaries, to the training grounds, to the financial resources, of terrorists and the Taliban," Karzai said. "And unless we do that, we will continue to suffer," he said. Meanwhile, a US-led coalition soldier was killed in fighting with insurgents in western Afghanistan Wednesday, the force said, as a separate NATO-led force said it killed over a dozen rebels in the country's east. The soldier, whose name and nationality were not revealed, died fighting militants who attacked their patrol in western Afghanistan, the coalition said in a statement without giving the exact location. "One coalition service member was killed by small arms fire this afternoon in western Afghanistan during a combat patrol," the coalition statement said. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, a separate foreign military deployment in Afghanistan, meanwhile said it killed more than a dozen militants along with Afghan security forces in the eastern province of Khost. The rebels were killed when a NATO "ground element responded to assist the Afghan security force, and US forces sent attack helicopters. More than a dozen insurgents died during the fighting," NATO said in a statement. The rebels had initially attacked a team of local road construction workers in the province's Bak district, the statement said.