US jets pounded suspected Osama bin Laden training camps in eastern Afghanistan yesterday and on the ground special forces pursued scattered fighters of the al-Qaeda network set up by the world's most wanted man.
British paratroopers arrived in Kabul to bolster a foreign force with a strong UN mandate to ensure security in a capital battered by years of civil war and by US jets in the last few months.
US jets prowled the skies, bombing areas around Khost where Osama bin Laden once ran training camps and where he or his al-Qaeda fighters may have taken refuge, the private Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said.
US helicopters landed in the area near the Zawara training camp, delivering US ground troops for a search operation for remnants of al-Qaeda and the vanquished Taliban militia that ruled Afghanistan until November, AIP said.
With jets roaring overhead, tribal elders in Khost in eastern Paktia province postponed a meeting to decide what to do with a teenager believed to have shot the first US soldier killed in the war when the 14-year-old disappeared, sources at the border said.
Afghan tribal elders were to convene a tribal council to discuss whether to hand the boy over to the US military, sources in the Pakistani border town of Miranshah said.
The slain special forces soldier, identified as Sergeant 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman, last week became the first US military casualty from hostile fire in the country, apparently killed in an ambush.
The US soldier was part of a 25-member fact-finding mission in eastern Paktia province to verify reports by locals that US planes had hit civilian targets in Khost's Mata Chinah area, AIP said.
The UN special envoy to Afghanistan said US forces were being very careful in their raids and he had not requested a halt to the bombing that has killed numerous civilians.
"I think the Americans are extremely careful," Lakhdar Brahimi said. "They know that in some cases civilians have been hit, and I am sure they will exercise maximum care to avoid these accidents in the future."
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