SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Hurricane Earl lashed the northeastern Caribbean on Monday as a still-growing Category 3 storm on a course that could threaten the eastern United States later this week.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Earl, which formed on Sunday, was already a major hurricane with sustained winds of 120 mph (193 kph), and it was likely to keep gaining force.

“Interests from North Carolina all the way to Maine should keep an eye on the system,” said Jessica Schauer, a meteorologist at the Hurricane Center.

The storm’s forecast track would run north of the Caribbean, then bend to the north, roughly parallel to the U.S. East Coast. The hurricane center said it is early to say what effect Earl would have on the U.S.

KABUL, Afghanistan – U.S. and Afghan troops repelled attackers wearing American uniforms and suicide vests in a pair of simultaneous assaults before dawn Saturday on NATO bases near the Pakistani border, including one where seven CIA employees died in a suicide attack last year.

The raids appear part of an insurgent strategy to step up attacks in widely scattered parts of the country as the U.S. focuses its resources on the battle around the Taliban’s southern birthplace of Kandahar.

Also Saturday, nearly 50 female pupils and teachers were rushed to the hospital after an apparent toxic gas attack at a Kabul high school, the government said. It was the second case of poisoning at a girls’ school in the capital this week. Officials suspect the Taliban, who oppose female education.

The militant assault in the border province of Khost began about 4 a.m. when dozens of insurgents stormed Forward Operating Base Salerno and nearby Camp Chapman with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, according to NATO and Afghan police.

Two attackers managed to breach the wire protecting Salerno but were killed before they could advance far onto the base, NATO said. Twenty-one attackers were killed — 15 at Salerno and six at Chapman – and five were captured, it said.

Three more insurgents, including a commander, were killed in an airstrike as they fled the area, NATO said.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said two Afghan soldiers were killed and three wounded in the fighting. Four U.S. troops were wounded, NATO officials said.

U.S. and Afghan officials blamed the attack on the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based faction of the Taliban with close ties to al-Qaida. Camp Chapman was the scene of the Dec. 30 suicide attack that killed the seven CIA employees.

Afghan police said about 50 insurgents took part in the twin assaults. After being driven away from the bases, the insurgents approached the nearby offices of the governor and provincial police headquarters but were also scattered, said Khost provincial police Chief Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai.

"Given the size of the enemy’s force, this could have been a major catastrophe for Khost. Luckily we prevented it," he said.

Small-arms fire continued through the morning, while NATO helicopters patrolled overhead. The dead were wearing U.S. Army uniforms, which can be easily purchased in shops in Kabul and other cities, possibly pilfered from military warehouses.

The twin attacks appeared to be part of a growing pattern of insurgent assaults far from the southern battlefields of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, which have been the main focus of the U.S. military campaign. Last December, President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan, most to the Kandahar area where the Islamist movement was organized in the mid-1990s.

Late Friday, insurgents stormed a police checkpoint in Takhar province near the northern border with Tajikistan. The Interior Ministry said nine insurgents were killed and 12 wounded with no losses on the government side. The day before, Taliban fighters killed eight Afghan policemen in a raid on a checkpoint outside the northern city of Kunduz.

And on Wednesday, an Afghan police driver with family links to the Taliban killed three Spaniards — two police trainers and their interpreter — at a training center in the northern province of Badghis.

Although the Afghan capital is relatively secure, incidents apparently directed at female students have raised concern about Taliban intimidation within the city.

The Health Ministry said 48 pupils and teachers at the Zabihullah Esmati High School were rushed to hospitals after falling ill with breathing problems and nausea. All but nine were treated and released after blood samples were taken to try to determine the cause.

On Wednesday, dozens of students and teachers at another Kabul girls’ school became sick when an unknown gas spread through classrooms, education officials said. The cause of that incident has not been determined, but officials fear the apparent poisonings could be part of an insurgent campaign to frighten girls from attending school.

Also Saturday, the government criticized U.S. media reports that alleged numerous Afghan officials had received payments from the CIA. A presidential office statement did not address or deny any specific allegations, but called the reports an insult to the government and an attempt to defame people within it.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the CIA had been paying Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for Afghanistan’s National Security Council, who was arrested last month as part of an investigation into corruption. The Washington Post reported the next day the agency was making payments to a large number of officials in President Hamid Karzai’s administration.

"Afghanistan believes that making such allegations will not strengthen the alliance against terrorism and will not strengthen an Afghanistan based on the law and rules, but will have negative effects in those areas," the statement by Karzai’s office said, without commenting on the substance of the reports.

"We strongly condemn such irresponsible allegations which just create doubt and defame responsible people of this country," it said.

Meanwhile, NATO issued a statement saying coalition helicopter pilots were not responsible for the deaths of three Afghan policemen killed Aug. 20 in what had been considered a friendly fire incident in Jowzjan province’s Darzab district.

It said the helicopters showed up hours after fighting began and it was possible the three had been killed earlier.

All Afghan forces had also been ordered to remain inside compounds at the time the two helicopters fired a missile and 80 30-millimeter rounds at an insurgent firing position, NATO said.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Three U.S. troops died in blasts in Afghanistan, bringing the death toll for July to at least 63 and surpassing the previous month’s record as the deadliest for American forces in the nearly 9-year-old war. In Kabul, police fired weapons into the air Friday to disperse a crowd of angry Afghans who shouted "death to America," hurled stones and set fire to two vehicles after an SUV was involved in a traffic accident that killed four Afghans on the main airport road, according to the capital’s criminal investigations chief, Abdul Ghaafar Sayedzada.

SUVs often are associated with foreigners, but it remained unclear who caused the accident because the occupants fled the scene. Afghan police, some carrying riot shields, converged on the area, firing warning shots into the air to disperse the protesters. Sayedzada said the crowd burned two foreigners’ vehicles, causing heavy black smoke to rise from the scene. "It is our right to raise up our voice and protest when innocent Afghans are harmed," said Azizullah, a 25-year-old student, who like many Afghans uses one name.

He said foreigners were in the vehicle that struck the car, killing the Afghan civilians. Ahmad Jawid, who also was at the scene, asked: "Are we not Muslims? Are we not from Afghanistan? Infidels are here and they are ruling us. Why?" A fatal traffic accident caused by a U.S. military convoy in 2006 triggered an anti-American riot in Kabul that left at least 14 people dead and dozens injured.

The three U.S. service members died in two separate blasts in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, a NATO statement said Friday. It gave no nationalities, but U.S. officials said all three were Americans. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity pending notification of kin. U.S. and NATO commanders had warned casualties would rise as the international military force ramps up the war against the Taliban, especially in their southern strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces. President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan last December in a bid to turn back a resurgent Taliban.

British and Afghan troops launched a new offensive Friday in the Sayedebad area of Helmand to try to deny insurgents a base from which to launch attacks in Nad Ali and Marjah, the British military announced. Coalition and Afghan troops have sought to solidify control of Marjah after overrunning the poppy-farming community five months ago. In Kabul, a crowd threw stones and set fire to an SUV after a traffic accident Friday in which two Afghans were killed and two were injured, according to traffic official Abdul Saboor. SUVs are associated with foreigners, but Saboor said the occupants of the vehicle fled the scene.

The tally of 63 American service member deaths in July is based on military reports compiled by The Associated Press. June had been the deadliest month for both the U.S. and the overall NATO-led force. A total of 104 international service members died last month, including 60 Americans. The American deaths this month include Petty Officer 2nd Class Justin McNeley from Kingman, Arizona, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Jarod Newlove, 25, from the Seattle area. They went missing last week in Logar province south of Kabul, and the Taliban announced they were holding one of the sailors.

McNeley’s body was recovered there Sunday, and Newlove’s body was pulled from a river Wednesday evening, Afghan officials said. The Taliban offered no explanation for Newlove’s death, but Afghan officials speculated he died of wounds suffered when the two were ambushed by the Taliban. The discovery of Newlove’s body only deepened the mystery of the men’s disappearance nearly 60 miles (100 kilometers) from their base in Kabul. An investigation is under way, but with both sailors dead, U.S. authorities remain at a loss to explain what two junior enlisted men in noncombat jobs were doing driving alone in Logar — much of which is not under government control.

Newlove’s father, Joseph Newlove, told KOMO-TV in Seattle he too was baffled why his son had left the relative safety of Kabul. "He’s never been out of that town. So why would he go out of that town? He wouldn’t have," he said. Senior military officials in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the sailors were never assigned anywhere near where their bodies were found.

A NATO official in Kabul shot down speculation the two were abducted in Kabul and driven to Logar — the same province where New York Times reporter David Rohde was kidnapped in 2008 while trying to make contact with a Taliban commander. Rohde and an Afghan colleague escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity, most spent in Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. Elsewhere, violence continued Friday.

Four Afghan civilians were killed and three were injured when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Zabul province of southern Afghanistan, provincial spokesman Mohammed Jan Rasoolyar said. When police arrived at the scene, Taliban fighters opened fire. One insurgent was killed, the spokesman said.

In Kandahar, a candidate in September’s parliamentary election escaped assassination Friday when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded, city security chief Fazil Ahmad Sherzad said. The Interior Ministry said a woman and a child were killed and another child was wounded.

BREAKING NEWS – 3 more US troops die in southern Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Three more U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan, bringing the U.S. death toll for July to at least 66 and making it the deadliest month for American forces in the nearly 9-year-war.

A NATO statement Friday said one service member died following an insurgent attack and two others were killed in a roadside bombing the same day in southern Afghanistan. A U.S military official confirmed all three were American troops. Earlier in the day, a U.S. military official confirmed three other American service members died in two separate blasts in southern Afghanistan on Thursday. The six deaths raised the U.S. death toll for the month to at least 66, according to an Associated Press count. June had been the deadliest month for the U.S. with 60 deaths.

In one of the deadliest 24-hour periods in weeks, 8 U.S. soldiers were killed in three separate attacks while the Taliban kidnapped 5 Afghan health ministry employees, all events occurring in southern Afghanistan. 

 3 U.S. troops died when an insurgent rammed an explosive-laden automobile into the main gate of an elite Afghan police compound in Kandahar, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, as other militants unleashed automatic fire. An Afghan police officer and five Afghan civilian workers were also killed in the brazen attack. Four other U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb and a fifth died during a small-arms firefight. These most recent deaths brings the tally of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year to 238, compared with 317 for all of last year. So far in July, 45 coalition troops have died in Afghanistan, 33 of them Americans, following the previous month’s trend, which was the deadliest for NATO-led force, with 103 ISAF soldiers killed. Also in Kandahar, Haji Khalifa a pro-government cleric, who is also a member of the Pajawai district shura, was gunned down in a mosque while he was praying on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, just a few hours ago five health ministry employees were kidnapped from Kandahar as well, according to Provincial spokesman Zulmi Ayubi. Gunmen stopped a medical team’s car that was en route to Kandahar from Maiwand district and abducted two doctors, a pharmacist, a nurse and their driver. The Taliban have intensified a campaign of assassinations and kidnappings of government workers and tribal leaders recently in a backlash against the increased presence of international forces in Kandahar. Insurgents are trying to intimidate and make the point they can still operate despite the extra security. Army Brig. Gen. Ben Hodges, a top U.S. commander in southern Afghanistan, said security will improve in coming months as additional American and Afghan forces move into unstable areas, saying: 
“It’s a rising tide. And that tide is starting to come in now. We’re going to start feeling those positive effects here as July turns into August."

In the contested district of Zhari, where the government has far less control than in Kandahar city, Hodges said combat operations will not begin until the Afghans are ready to take the lead in governing. He said U.S. forces could easily clear these areas but doing so without establishing local governance and permanent security forces would make it a fruitless exercise. Hodges has learned from NATO’s experience in neighboring Helmand that it is easier to win a military battle than it is to subsequently implement effective governance.