German lawmakers on Friday approved a military surge in Afghanistan which will increase the authorized limit for the German troop contingent from 4,500 to 5,350.
The German military - or Bundeswehr - mandate was carried by the parliamentary majority of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and her centre-right coalition partner, the Free Democrats (FDP), DPA reported.
The opposition Social Democrats (SPD) said they would also vote in favour, ensuring crucial bipartisan support for a 12-month renewal of the Afghan deployment, which is deeply unpopular among Germans.
Germany cannot deploy troops abroad without annual parliamentary approval.
Radical Left Party members created a ruckus when they were thrown out of the plenary session for raising placards in protest at the Afghanistan deployment. It is forbidden to demonstrate in the Bundestag, or parliament.
The placards carried the names of Afghan civilians killed in the conflict, in reference to a German-commanded airstrike which killed or injured up to 142 people in the Kunduz region last September.
The Left Party was later readmitted to vote on the mandate, which they intended to unanimously oppose. The Greens said they would abstain from the vote.
Overall, 429 parliamentarians voted in favour of the mandate, previously approved by Merkel's cabinet, while 111 members opposed the vote and 46 abstained.
A key SPD demand for the renewed mandate was a clear commitment to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in the year 2011. The government has said it supports this aim, but has explicitly refrained from naming a fixed withdrawal date.
The Bundeswehr, or military, warned earlier in the day that the new mandate could expose German soldiers to greater danger.
The goal is to shift to training Afghan security personnel, encouraging German troops to work alongside local police and army counterparts.
"In future, one change will certainly be that the soldiers will spend more time outside of the military camps, to be able to give the population an even stronger sense of security," military spokesman Joerg Langer told state RBB radio.
Under the new mandate, 1,400 German troops will be responsible for training local police and military - up from 280 at present. The total troop number is to increase by 500, plus 350 to be kept as "flexible reserve."
Germany is the third largest troop supplier under the umbrella of Nato's ISAF mission to Afghanistan.