* 2010 death toll for foreign troops hits 700
* Two suicide bombers attack Afghan soldiers in Kabul
* Five Afghan soldiers and police killed in northern attack
(Adds details, background throughout)
By Michelle Nichols and Mohammad Hamed
KABUL/KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, 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 in 2010, by far the deadliest year of the near decade-long war.
Two militants wearing suicide vests attacked a bus carrying Afghan army officers in Kabul, killing five and wounding nine, said Kabul Deputy Police Chief Khalilullah Dastyar.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault, the first major attack in the Afghan capital since May, when six foreign troops were killed by a large suicide car bomb.
Insurgents opened fire on a bus carrying the officers on the main road from Kabul to the eastern city of Jalalabad, the site of NATO and Afghan army bases and several similar attacks.
One attacker blew himself up and the other was shot by police before he could detonate his explosives. Television pictures of a burned-out bus underscored the ferocity of the attack.
In the north, five Afghan soldiers and police were killed in an attack by three suicide bombers in the city of Kunduz, visited a day earlier by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Defence Ministry said four suicide bombers attacked an army training centre. Two blew themselves up at the entrance to the compound, but a gunbattle raged all morning with two others who got inside, a Reuters witness said.
Smoke and flames were visible from buildings in the area, and Afghan and foreign forces rushed to the site.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in a statement, described the attacks as a "major and unforgiving crime...(by) Afghaninstan's enemies opposing the strengthening of the Afghan security forces".
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.
At least 2,270 foreign troops have been killed since 2001, according to figures kept by Reuters and monitoring website www.iCasualties.org, roughly two-thirds of them Americans.
Afghan troops and police have suffered far higher casualties, but the government does not release exact figures. Civilian casualties are also at record levels this year.
INSURGENCY SPREADING
A war strategy review released by U.S. President Barack Obama last week found NATO-led forces were making headway against the Taliban, but serious challenges remained. [ID:nN16182656]
The Taliban are at their strongest since they were ousted from power in 2001 by U.S.-backed forces for refusing to hand over al Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden.
They have spread out of traditional heartlands in the south and east over the past two years, bringing violence into once peaceful areas of the north and west.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said last week in a rare public statement that worsening violence had made it harder for aid groups to reach those in need than at any time in the past three decades, marked by the battle against Soviet occupation and a civil war.
The conflict has expanded at a time of mounting corruption and as countries which have dispatched troops to back Karzai are looking for ways to bring them home and cut spending on a war increasingly unpopular with voters.
"The deteriorating security situation in the north and northwest raise deep political and economic concerns," Eurasia group Analyst Maria Kuusisto said in a note published on Friday.
Insurgents are under pressure from intensified military campaigns in their strongholds, Kuusisto said. But rather than merely moving to easier fighting ground, they also seek to force NATO to spread troops more thinly across the country and put pressure on northern supply lines through Central Asia.
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 Karzai is too ambitious. They point to shortcomings in Afghanistan's security forces and say that setting a target to begin withdrawing troops only emboldens the insurgents. (Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin and Ahmad Masood, writing by Emma Graham-Harrison, editing by Ron Popeski) (If you have a query or comment about this story, send an e-mail to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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