* Annual death toll for foreign troops hits 700
* Two suicide bombers attack Afghan soldiers in Kabul
* Five Afghan soldiers and police killed in northern attack
By Michelle Nichols
KABUL, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents launched attacks in Kabul and a major northern city on Sunday as the death toll for foreign troops in Afghanistan hit 700, making 2010 the deadliest year of the nearly decade-long war.
Two militants wearing vests packed with explosives attacked a bus carrying Afghan soldiers in Kabul, killing at least one soldier, said Kabul Deputy Police Chief Khalilullah Dastyar.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault, which was the first major attack in the Afghan capital since May, when six foreign troops were killed in a similar incident.
Police killed the attackers before they could detonate their explosives, Dastyar said.
In the north, five Afghan soldiers and police were killed in an attack by three suicide bombers in the city of Kunduz, which was visited a day earlier by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Defence Ministry said four suicide bombers attacked an army training centre. Two had been killed and two were trapped inside, the ministry said.
The grim milestone for foreign troop deaths was reached after a member of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed overnight by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan. ISAF gave no other details of the incident.
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 intensified over the past 18 months.
About 2,270 foreign troops have been killed since the Taliban were ousted in 2001 by U.S.-backed Afghan forces, according to figures kept by Reuters and monitoring website www.iCasualties.org.
Roughly two-thirds of those killed were 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 U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday found U.S. 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. [ID:nN16182656]
The Taliban are at their strongest since the Islamist regime were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces for refusing to hand over al Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden, after the Sept. 11, 2001, 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 U.S. 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.
(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin and Ahmad Masood; Editing by Paul Tait and Miral Fahmy) (If you have a query or comment about this story, send an e-mail to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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