Washington  - Senator Barack Obama said Monday he would deploy an additional 10,000 troops to Afghanistan to help US and NATO forces fight off resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said he would begin withdrawing troops from Iraq and send an extra two combat brigades to Afghanistan.

"We won't have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq," Obama wrote in an article published by The New York Times.

The Taliban attacked a remote US military outpost near the border with Pakistan on Sunday, killing nine American soldiers in the deadliest attack on US forces in Afghanistan in three years.

The US casualty rate in Afghanistan has began to equal or even exceed the rate in Iraq, as President George W Bush's troop surge has largely succeeding in sharply bringing down violence in the country.

Obama has called for setting a timeframe for the withdrawal of US forces in Iraq. But he pledged to keep a small number there for training the Iraqi military. He also said special operation forces would remain in Iraq to hunt down al-Qaeda. (dpa)