US commandos test Taleban defences
The troops were reportedly flown in from the USS Kitty
Hawk
US special forces have launched a commando raid in Afghanistan - the first combat operation on the ground since air strikes began on 7 October.
Pentagon officials said around 100 elite troops backed by AC-130 flying gunships, raided a garrison near the Taleban stronghold of Kandahar and were extracted by helicopter.
Defence analyst Major Charles Heyman said the raid was most probably a mission to probe the Taleban's defences.
The officials have so far given few details of the action, but the Taleban said they had forced the US troops to withdraw while suffering no casualties themselves.
Taleban Education Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told Reuters news agency that several US helicopters carrying commandos landed on Baba Sahib mountain but "the Taleban approached there and forced them to flee back by firing at them."
Helicopter lost
Later the Pentagon said a US military helicopter had crashed in an accident in neighbouring Pakistan, killing two people.
The helicopter was in Pakistani airspace and was reported to be ready to provide rescue help if necessary for the special forces.
A Taleban official said it had been hit by their fire.
"A group of special forces, including Army Rangers, went into Afghanistan today - overnight Afghanistan time - to conduct operations," a Pentagon official said.
The BBC's Mike Wooldridge, who is in northern Afghanistan, says the sign is that there will be more such raids as the Americans search for Osama Bin Laden and continue their efforts to weaken the Taleban.
President Bush, who is in Shanghai for a summit of Pacific nations, was briefed about the operation in a secure video conference.
Referring to the helicopter crash victims, he said: "the important thing for me to tell the American people is these soldiers will not have died in vain".
He said the campaign was making good progress and it was "a just cause".
In other developments:
Pakistan says a senior Taleban official,
tribal affairs minister Jalaluddin Haqqani,
is holding talks in Islamabad on the
creation of a broad-based government,
but the minister himself gives no
indication that anyone in the Taleban is
ready to step down
The exodus of Afghan refugees
continues, with up to 4,000 people
reported to have crossed the Chaman
border post into Pakistan on Saturday
The Taleban reiterate their refusal to
surrender Saudi-born militant Osama Bin
Laden
Pakistan allows the US to use a third
airbase near the Afghanistan border
A small bomb explodes at the main
international airport in the Pakistani
capital, Islamabad, but there are no
casualties
Senior Afghan opposition commander
General Dostum appears on Turkish
television to deny reports of his death
President Bush tells the Asia-Pacific
summit in Shanghai that the US is
fighting for "values shared by the West,
Asia and Islam"
A Swedish aid agency closes five offices
in Afghanistan, accusing the Taleban of
looting stores and beating its staff
Tests show anthrax sent to NBC news in
New York, a tabloid newspaper in Florida,
and the Senate in Washington are
"indistinguishable"
In northern Afghanistan, one of the leaders of the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance, General Rashid Dostum, said a team of American military personnel was also working with him directly on the ground.
General Dostum said they had been holding talks near the strategically-important town of Mazar-e-Sharif, which the Alliance is trying to capture.
Meanwhile, the Russian military has given the clearest signal yet that it regards the Northern alliance as inside Moscow's sphere of influence.
The Russian defence ministry's head of operations in Tajikistan, General Vladimir Popov, said Russia had given enough help to the alliance to, as he put it, complete its work and it needed no other assistance.
The BBC's correspondent in Tajikistan, Monica
Whitlock, says General Popov also gave
unequivocal backing to a Northern Alliance
government in Afghanistan, contrasting with
the widely discussed idea of a broad-based
government.
-- Anonymous, October 20, 2001