More troops for Afghanistan?

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama faces a decision later this year whether to send an extra 10,000 US troops to Afghanistan, amid an escalating war against Islamist insurgents, officials said.

A top general and senior Pentagon official disclosed on Wednesday for the first time details of a pending request from the US commander in Afghanistan for yet more troops for a war that has already lasted more than seven years.

"What the president was told is that the request (for more troops) is out there, but he doesn't have to make a decision until the fall so that the troops would arrive as planned in 2010," Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.