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Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged with 17 counts of murder and six counts of assault and attempted murder in connection with the massacre, a senior U.S. defense official tells NBC News.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday that he believes there should be no American troop drawdowns in 2013, leaving the total at the 68,000 that will remain following scheduled withdrawals this year.

Bypassed for a promotion and struggling to pay for his house, Robert Bales was eyeing a way out of his job at a Washington state military base months before he allegedly gunned down 16 civilians in an Afghan war zone, records and interviews showed as a deeper picture emerged Saturday of the Army sergeant's financial troubles and brushes with the law....

US military sources tell Fox News the American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians last weekend is Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who is being flown to a military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday accused the United States of failing to fully cooperate with an investigation into the massacre of 16 Afghan villagers by a U.S. staff sergeant and questioned whether only one soldier could have been involved.

Prospects for an orderly withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan suffered two blows on Thursday, as President Hamid Karzai demanded that American troops be confined to major bases by next year.

The call would soon become agonizingly familiar: A 28-year-old Army specialist from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, recently home from Afghanistan, had walked into a parking garage in Salt Lake City with a full set of body armor, ammunition clips and his AR-15 rifle.

Officials say the US mission in Afghanistan will not change in the wake of an American soldier's attack on civilians, and troops are still on course to hand over security control to Afghans by the end of 2014.

The Taliban vowed revenge Monday for an "inhumane attack" in which an American soldier allegedly shot to death 16 civilians in southern Afghanistan and torched their bodies - an assault that has fueled anger still simmering after U.S. troops burned Qurans last month.

A U.S. soldier was detained after 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, were shot dead in what witnesses described on Sunday as a night-time massacre near a U.S. base in Afghanistan's violent south.