American soldier killed in battle in Afghanistan

By Robert Burns

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – A U.S. Army Special Forces soldier was killed by small-arms fire in eastern Afghanistan today, the first member of the American military to die in the three-month-old campaign.

Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. Central Command, announced the death at a news conference in Tampa, Fla. He said the soldier’s name was being withheld until family members were notified.

Franks said the soldier was part of a U.S. military team that was working with “local tribal elements” near the town of Khost. He offered no specific details of the incident.

The four-star general said the death underscored the dangers faced by U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, where there are pockets of resistance from al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

On Nov. 25, CIA operative Johnny “Mike” Spann was killed during a prison uprising in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The only other U.S. military members killed inside Afghanistan were three U.S. special operations troops mistakenly hit by a U.S. airstrike near Kandahar on Dec. 5.

Pentagon officials have stressed frequently that although the large-scale fighting in Afghanistan is over, the country remains dangerous for U.S. troops, who now number about 4,000 on the ground.

Afghanistan “is still an extraordinarily dangerous place and this is an extraordinarily dangerous mission,” Victoria Clarke, chief spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, told reporters today before the combat casualty was disclosed by other officials.

U.S. warplanes bombed a suspected al-Qaida base in eastern Afghanistan for the second time in as many days today after coalition observers detected some of Osama bin Laden’s forces trying to regroup there, military officials said.

The second strike on the Zawar Kili camp near Khost took place in late morning, after coalition forces detected some activity at the base in the hours following the first strike, Clarke said.

To improve the coalition’s ability to conduct strikes, a U.S. team of about 180 people is preparing an air base in Kyrgyzstan for use by fighter-bombers and air tankers, said a defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Within a few weeks, the base will be ready for F-15E Strike Eagles, fighter-bombers that can carry “bunker-buster” penetrating bombs, the official said.

Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic that borders China, is not adjacent to Afghanistan. But the air base will give coalition forces a northern base from which to fly missions in Afghanistan.

The search for bin Laden, whom the United States holds responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, continues by land, sea and air.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the Pentagon will continue pursuing bin Laden and his top lieutenants, as well as Mullah Mohammed Omar and other Taliban leaders. The military campaign in Afghanistan will not be over until they are found, Rumsfeld said.

“We intend to find them and we intend to capture or kill them,” Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference Thursday.

“Our real goal is to see that people are not committing terrorist acts,” he added later.

Rumsfeld repeatedly said the U.S. military campaign against al-Qaida has been effective, even while acknowledging that it has not met President Bush’s stated goal of bringing top terrorist leaders to justice.

“We’ve disrupted any number of training camps, and it does take training to become a polished, successful murderer or mass murderer,” Rumsfeld said. “You just don’t walk out of grade school with that kind of knowledge; you need to practice and be taught by experts.”

Details of the twin strikes – the first since Dec. 28 – were sketchy. In the first strike, defense officials said fighters and bombers dropped about 100 bombs on the compound, which included a training facility and a cave complex. An AC-130 gunship also took part.

An official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the undetermined number of al-Qaida fighters at the compound appeared to be regrouping either to resume fighting or to slip across the nearby border into Pakistan.

U.S. cruise missiles struck the same compound in August 1998 in response to terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa, Myers said. It also was struck in November.

“It has been a place where the al-Qaida goes to regroup,” said Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was not clear how many al-Qaida members may have been killed in the attack.

On Dec. 28, U.S. planes struck a compound near the city of Gardez, not far from Thursday’s and today’s strikes.

In other developments: