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A Syrian opposition leader said Tuesday that he had asked the United States to defend rebel-held areas with Patriot missiles. NATO already has Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries in NATO-member Turkey to help defend the country from potential airstrikes by President Bashar Assad's regime.

A German official is saying Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has told NATO allies that the U.S. will leave between 8,000-12,000 American troops in Afghanistan after 2014, when combat ends.

The U.S. will send two batteries of Patriot missiles and 400 troops to Turkey as part of a NATO force meant to protect Turkish territory from potential Syrian missile attack, the Pentagon said Friday.

A NATO official says the military alliance has approved plans to send Patriot anti-missile systems to southern Turkey to bolster its defense against strikes from neighboring Syria....

A squad of nine suicide bombers attacked a major U.S.-Afghan air base in the eastern city of Jalalabad just after dawn Sunday, exploding bombs at the front gate and sparking a lengthy firefight with both Afghan and NATO forces inside.

Syria on Friday condemned Turkey's request for NATO to deploy Patriot defense missiles near their common border, calling it "provocative", after a spate of fighting there that has raised fears of the Syrian civil war embroiling the wider region.

Turkey has asked NATO to deploy Patriot missiles on its territory, the alliance said on Wednesday, to help it defend itself against any Syrian attacks.

France on Tuesday ended its combat operations in Afghanistan, pulling hundreds of troops from a base in a volatile region northeast of Kabul and fulfilling promises to end its combat role on a faster track than other NATO allies....

The top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan offered a somber apology on Friday in an eastern province where officials say 18 civilians — half of them children — were killed in a coalition airstrike this week.

The second highest al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan was killed in a weekend airstrike in the country's volatile east near the border with Pakistan, NATO-led forces said on Tuesday.