Italy will start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in summer 2011, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said on Monday, as a funeral was held for four Italian soldiers killed in the war-torn nation.

"Italy is… thinking about the withdrawal of its troops at the right moment and in complete coordination with its allies," Frattini said in an interview published in La Repubblica daily.

Referring to talks at a NATO summit due in November, Frattini said: "The timing is beginning to be defined: summer 2011 for the beginning of a gradual withdrawal to be completed in 2014."

Frattini's interview was issued on the same day that a funeral was held in Rome for four soldiers killed in an ambush in Afghanistan on Saturday, with top officials including President Giorgio Napolitano in attendance.

Italy has around 3,400 troops in Afghanistan. The number is expected to rise to around 4,000 by the end of the year.

The deaths took to 34 the number of troops from Italy to die in Afghanistan since 2004, when Italian troops were deployed there.

earlier related report

Blast on US chopper in Afghanistan kills one, wounds eight
Kabul (AFP) Oct 12, 2010 –

An explosion on board a US helicopter killed one person and wounded eight others shortly after it landed on a small military base in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, a military spokesman said.

The US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the cause of the explosion was unclear, but the Taliban claimed its fighters in Kunar province shot down the helicopter.

An AFP correspondent in Marawar district said he saw three helicopters flying over the Ghash area and then heard the sound of rocket fire, after which two helicopters flew off and an exchange of small arms fire broke out.

Eastern Afghanistan is one of the most volatile parts of the country, where Taliban and other Islamist insurgents have carved out a strong presence. It is just across the border from Pakistan, where militant groups have rear bases.

ISAF said seven troops were wounded and one person killed, but a spokesman later raised the number of injured to eight.

There were 26 people on board the helicopter, which an ISAF spokesman identified as a US Chinook.

"We're working very hard to have a read through and sort out. We think right now it's one dead and eight injured. It's fair to say that some of the wounded were ISAF service members," the spokesman said.

The military said that the landing site had been secured by Afghan and NATO soldiers, and that the cause of the explosion was under investigation.

There are currently around 152,000 foreign troops under US and NATO command in Afghanistan, fighting in a bid to reverse a nine-year Taliban insurgency. Two thirds of the troops are Americans.

NATO and US troops rely heavily on helicopters for transporting troops and supplies across the country, where convoys travelling on largely poor roads are liable to be attacked by insurgents.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, claimed Tuesday that his militia shot down the helicopter.

"We shot down a NATO helicopter with rocket fire. All the soldiers on board were killed," he told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The group is known to exaggerate its claims.

On June 9, Taliban militants shot down a NATO helicopter, killing four US troops, in Helmand province — one of the militia's primary strongholds in southern Afghanistan.

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