Foreign troops 2010 toll in Afghanistan hits 700

A member of the NATO-led force  in Afghanistan was killed on Sunday, taking the total number  of foreign troops killed in 2010 to 700, by far the deadliest  year of the war since the Taliban were toppled in 2001.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force  (ISAF) said one service member was killed by a roadside bomb  in southern Afghanistan. It gave no other details.

A total of 521 foreign troops were killed in 2009,  previously the worst year of the war, but operations against the Taliban-led insurgency have increased dramatically over the past 18 months.

About 2,270 foreign troops have been killed since the war  began, roughly two-thirds of them Americans.

Afghan troops and police have suffered far higher casualties, but exact casualty figures are not provided by the  government. Civilian casualties are also at record levels this year.

A war strategy review released by US President Barack Obama on Thursday found US and NATO forces were making headway against the Taliban and al-Qaeda but serious challenges remain. It said the Taliban's momentum had been arrested in much of Afghanistan and reversed in some areas.

The Taliban are at their strongest since the Islamist regime were ousted by US-backed Afghan forces after the regime refused to hand over al-Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden, after the September 11 al-Qaeda attacks on the United States.

The insurgency has spread out of its traditional strongholds in the south and east over the past two years into once peaceful areas of the north and west.

NATO leaders agreed at a summit in Lisbon last month to end combat operations and hand security responsibility to Afghan forces by the end of 2014. Obama has promised to begin withdrawing US troops from July 2011.

But critics say the 2014 target set by President Hamid  Karzai is too ambitious and that there are shortcomings in Afghanistan's security forces, and that setting a target to  begin withdrawing troops only emboldens the insurgents.