The Defense Department confirmed an East Tennessean was among nine soldiers killed during the weekend in the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan in three years.

Spc. Jason Dean Hovater of Clinton and his comrades were killed Sunday when about 200 militants armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades attacked a remote outpost in Wanat near the Pakistan border, according to a statement from the Defense Department.

While the attack was repelled, U.S. and Afghan troops later abandoned the outpost.

The soldiers were assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team based in Vicenza, Italy. Hovater had been in Afghanistan for 16 months.

“He only had a week left before he was leaving (Afghanistan),” his sister, Jessica Davis of Norris, told the Knoxville News Sentinel. “We were all excited to see him and be with him and hold him.”

She said her parents, Gerald and Kathy Hovater of Lake City, learned of her brother’s death when Army officers knocked on their door Monday morning.

Hovater and his wife, Jenna Hovater, were married six weeks before he deployed. He would have turned 25 on Aug. 10.

Proceeds from the CPL Jason D. Hovater bracelet will be donated to Legacies Alive.