SUKKARIYEH, Syria — Families in this village near the Iraqi border buried loved ones today who they said were killed when the U.S. military launched a rare attack in Syrian territory. During the funerals, angry residents shouted anti-American slogans and carried banners reading: "Down with Bush and the American enemy."

The Syrian government said four U.S. military helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction shortly before sundown Sunday in Sukkariyeh about five miles inside the Syrian border.

The government statement said eight people were killed, including a man and his four children and a woman. However, local officials said seven men were killed and two other people were wounded, including a woman among the injured.

An Associated Press journalist at the funerals in the village's cemetery saw the bodies of seven men — none of them minors. The discrepancy could not be explained.

A U.S. military official in Washington confirmed Sunday that special forces had conducted a raid in Syria that targeted the network of al-Qaida-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria into Iraq.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Insurgents shot down a U.S. helicopter after exchanging fire with its crew in central Afghanistan today, while a suicide bomber in the north killed two U.S. soldiers inside a police station, officials said.The helicopter was forced down in Wardak, one province west of Kabul, after insurgents hit it with gunfire today, said Lt. Cmdr. Walter Matthew, a U.S. military spokesman. The crew survived and have been extracted from the area, he said.Separately, a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform blew himself up inside a police station in northern Afghanistan today, killing two American soldiers and wounding five other people, officials said.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — A suspected U.S. missile strike killed up to 20 people in northwestern Pakistan today, officials said, the latest salvo in an intensifying assault on militant hideouts near the Afghan border.The reported strike occurred in the South Waziristan region, part of Pakistan's wild border zone that is considered a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.Missile strikes into Pakistan's border region have escalated sharply amid complaints from American commanders that Pakistani forces are not putting enough pressure on militant strongholds on their territory.U.S. military and CIA drones that patrol the frontier region are believed to have carried out at least 15 strikes since August. The United States rarely confirms or denies involvement.