Afghan Suicide Bombing Kills 5 French Troops

The New York Times reports:

A suicide bomber killed five French troops guarding a meeting between NATO officers and Afghan tribal elders on Wednesday morning northeast of the capital, one of the bloodiest days for French troops in Afghanistan.

The deaths, confirmed in a statement from President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, occurred just one day after he visited Kabul and announced that France would withdraw 1,000 of its approximately 4,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012.

The suicide attack came as the President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan leaders converged in southern Afghanistan for the funeral of the president’s powerful half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a power broker and sometimes nettlesome ally of the American military who was assassinated by a close associate on Tuesday morning.