Deadly Day In Afghanistan

Hours after a top American commander warned that coalition troops in Afghanistan face the threat of increased attacks, a U.S. soldier was killed in a firefight Saturday.

The soldier was shot while on a nighttime operation in the eastern province of Paktika, near the border with Pakistan. An army statement from Fort Bragg, N.C. identified him as an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper. His name was not being released until his family could be notified.

He was the first U.S. soldier killed in combat in Afghanistan since August, when a soldier died of wounds suffered in a July ambush.

Also Saturday, a military helicopter crashed in the Afghan capital, killing all seven German peacekeepers aboard and two children on the ground.

It was unclear what brought down the Sikorsky CH-53 helicopter in an industrial neighborhood on the eastern edge of Kabul, said Lt. Col. Andreas Steffan, spokesman for Dutch and German peacekeepers. Witnesses said it was not shot down.

In Berlin, the Defense Ministry said the crash would be investigated by German experts. The ministry confirmed seven German peacekeepers died and two Afghan girls were missing.

In Kabul, Police Chief Basir Salangi said the accident killed two Afghan children. The helicopter was on a routine patrol over the city, and crashed in an area where many refugees live.

Late Saturday, members of the 4,800-strong multinational peacekeeping force searched the wreckage and surrounding area for the bodies.

A witness reported seeing a fire on the helicopter before it crashed on the eastern edge of the Afghan capital. Peacekeepers quickly cordoned off the area.

"I looked up and I saw a fire on the helicopter and then it turned onto its left side and crashed in among the buildings," said Mohammed Mousa, a worker in the area. He said it did not appear to him that the helicopter had been fired upon.

Elsewhere, two U.S. soldiers were injured in separate incidents and an American base came under rocket fire - underscoring the continuing danger in Afghanistan.

On Friday, Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeil, a top U.S. commander in the region, warned that more attacks on American and allied troops were likely.

"Is there likely to be an increase in hostile acts against the coalition? I think yes," McNeill told The Associated Press in an interview.

McNeil, speaking from the U.S. command center at Bagram Air Base, said American forces were stepping up reconstruction efforts in the war-battered nation, but their first priority was to hunt down terrorists - and that job was not over.

"We have not in my view captured or killed all the terrorists in Afghanistan," he said. "Some of them have gone underground so deep that it's difficult for me to put an absolute mark on them."

About 8,000 American troops are deployed across the mountainous nation, mostly along the eastern border with Pakistan. McNeill said the soldiers were in Afghanistan for the long haul, and he did not expect troop strength to be reduced if the United States goes to war with Iraq.

The soldier killed Saturday was on patrol when his unit got into a firefight about 4 a.m. with forces suspected of being linked to the ousted Taliban regime or al Qaeda, said Army spokesman Maj. Steve Clutter.

"They had these individuals under observation for a while," Clutter said. "They were actually getting ready to approach them to investigate and as they got closer they realized they were armed."

The enemy forces fled across the border into Pakistan, Clutter said.

But CBS News consultant Jere Van Dyk says, "These are not necessarily Taliban. They're most probably not al Qaeda. (Rather, they're probably) Afghans living along the border who are opposed to any foreign military presence in their country.

Van Dyk does agree about the heightened danger. "It's going to become increasingly more dangerous because the Afghans are watching very closely what the U.S. soldiers are doing. They're watching the manner in which they fight, where they stay, how they come at them," he says.

In other incidents, a U.S. special operations soldier was hurt Friday afternoon when rockets were fired at a U.S. compound in Asadabad, the capital of Afghanistan's northeastern Kunar province. The soldier was taken to Bagram where he underwent surgery. He was listed in stable condition, the military said in a statement.

The air base immediately sent an A-10 aircraft to Asadabad. It strafed the area with 2,000 rounds from its 40-mm guns to try to flush out the enemy attackers. It was not known whether any of the attackers was hurt or killed.

Rockets, many Chinese-made and connected to crude water timers, have been fired frequently at U.S. troops stationed at the Khost airfield in eastern Afghanistan. The rockets, sometimes leaned against rocks, are difficult to aim and have rarely caused casualties.

A third solder was hurt in a weapons training exercise with the Afghan military near Spinboldak in southeast Afghanistan. The soldier was trying to correct a misfire on a rocket-propelled grenade launcher at the time.

He was stable after undergoing surgery at Bagram.

In the fourth incident, the military said two rockets were fired near a U.S. base at Khost in eastern Afghanistan. There were no injuries, and the base was not damaged.

Despite the incidents, U.S. Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said the "situation continues to get better over here."

"U.S. and coalition forces have been shot at from time to time. We're going to take some casualties," Myers said while visiting troops at Bagram Saturday.

U.S. forces are hunting fugitive al Qaeda and Taliban in the rugged mountain peaks of eastern and northeastern Afghanistan. U.S. special forces are also looking for renegade rebel commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the same region. Hekmatyar has made frequent calls for a holy war against American soldiers in Afghanistan.

This week the United Nations issued a report saying that al-Qaida training camps had resumed in eastern Afghanistan. The camps are small and mobile, the report said.

The area also borders deeply conservative regions of Pakistan where suicide bombers are being recruited and trained, sources tell The Associated Press.

The bombers are being offered $50,000 for their families if they carry out suicide attacks in Afghanistan, the sources said. The presence of the training camps and plans to carry out suicide attacks was corroborated by a Western intelligence source.

With Saturday's death, 16 U.S. servicemen have been killed in combat or hostile situations in Afghanistan since the anti-terror campaign began last year. The most recent fatality was on May 19.