US forces kill nine Taliban suspects in Afghan mountains

KABUL, Afghanistan -- US special-operations snipers killed nine suspected Taliban militants in the Afghan mountains bordering Pakistan, the military said yesterday, marking one of American forces' deadliest engagements in months.

The military would not say if the clash marked the start of a promised spring offensive to capture Osama bin Laden, though a spokesman said the fighting began when as many as 40 suspected Taliban tried to flank the position held by the Americans and their Afghan army allies.

Also yesterday, gunmen shot and killed an aid worker as he drove home from work in the restive southern province of Zabul, a senior official said.

Dr. Isha Khan, 33, director for the Red Crescent Society in Zabul, was attacked at around 5 p.m. on a road between the town of Qalat and Khan's home village of Nokhaiz, 10 miles to the north.

Over the past two weeks, US commanders have pledged what they call a hammer-and-anvil approach for the spring thaw into summer, with the crucial support of Pakistan troops on their own side of the Afghan frontier.

Under that plan, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region where terror suspects are thought to be hiding becomes the anvil against which terror suspects would be hammered, the military said.

With bin Laden and other top Al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives the subject of redoubled US attention, the world's news crews have launched a spring offensive of their own. US news organizations are rapidly boosting staff in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

But after touting the planned offensive, the US military now appears bent on tamping down expectations.

"I don't have any other information about Osama bin Laden," military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty said at a news conference yesterday at the US base in Kabul.

Hilferty addressed reporters before a budding almond tree, its white blooms testifying to the warming air in the Kabul valley, and the melting snow in the Afghanistan-Pakistan mountains where bin Laden may be hiding.

"If I knew where he was, I would go get him," he said. In January, Hilferty had said he was "sure" the United States and its allies would catch bin Laden by the end of the year.

Pakistan's interior minister echoed that sentiment in a television interview broadcast yesterday.

"There is an operation going on," Faisal Saleh Hayyat told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya satellite channel. "Osama bin Laden or some of his followers will probably be captured within days or weeks if these operations continue. Also, perhaps it will take more time until they are captured."

Hilferty yesterday did not specifically answer a question about whether the latest operations were the start of the promised spring offensive, reminding reporters that there had been patrols throughout the winter as well.

He denied one recent report that US forces were hunting bin Laden in Tora Bora, the same cave complex pounded by US forces throughout December 2001 in the belief the Al Qaeda leader was hiding there. No American forces under US Central Command were carrying out any extraordinary operations there, Hilferty said.