GIs Kill 2 In Afghanistan

U.S. troops clashed with militants in southern Afghanistan, killing at least two fighters, and a rocket attack on the main American base in the country wounded a U.S. soldier, officials said Thursday.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan were doing "almost nothing" to stem the flow of drugs from that country.

The shootout was sparked when two men on a motorcycle refused to stop when U.S. troops confronted them near Poshakan village in the southern province of Uruzgan province, a hotspot for U.S. troops battling Taliban militants, the local mayor said.

The two men were killed in the fight Wednesday, said Mayor Haji Obaidullah, identifying one of the dead as local Taliban commander Mullah Dur Mohammad.

Obaidullah said Afghan forces arrested another Taliban commander, Mullah Usman, during a search operation on Tuesday in nearby Kalatak village.

The U.S. military said it was involved in a battle in Uruzgan on Wednesday that left one militant dead. It was unclear if it was the same incident. A military statement said patrolling U.S. troops fired back at a man who had shot at them, fatally wounding him. It gave no further details.

The fighting came on the heels of a series of incidents Monday that killed three American soldiers and wounded 14, underlining Afghanistan's fragile security less than three weeks before national elections, which Taliban rebels have vowed to disrupt.

The deaths brought to 100 the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan.

Also Wednesday, three rockets were fired at Bagram Air Base, the hub of U.S. military operations since the war that scattered the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies nearly three years ago.

One of the rockets hit inside the perimeter of the base, injuring a soldier with shrapnel, the statement said. The soldier returned to duty after treatment.

Rockets were fired at U.S. bases in Paktika and Zabul provinces, causing no injuries or damage.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military also said that the first of more than 1,000 extra soldiers assigned to help protect the elections began arriving in Afghanistan on Wednesday.

The troops from the 82nd Airborne Division raise the personnel number in the U.S.-led coalition here to more than 18,000.

NATO commands a separate 8,000-strong security force to help protect the vote in the country's north.

Since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, Afghanistan's opium production has risen dramatically and much of it makes its way to Western Europe via Central Asia and Russia. The cultivation of opium poppies was largely eliminated under the Taliban's religious policing, but farmers have resumed cultivating and harvesting the profitable crop.

"They are doing almost nothing there even to lessen the drug threat," Putin said at a meeting with the head of Russia's drug agency, Viktor Cherkesov, referring to the U.S.-led international force in Afghanistan. "Our efforts through diplomatic and political channels are not achieving results yet."

He said it was necessary to step up cooperation with all the countries involved in the anti-terrorism effort in Afghanistan, and especially to drive home to Western countries that they, too, were threatened by the Afghan drug trade.

Putin said that Russian drug authorities should do a better job of informing the West of the drug threat they themselves face.

Cherkesov told Putin that experts estimate 70 percent to 80 percent of the opiates in Britain originate in Afghanistan.

U.N. surveys estimate Afghanistan accounted for three-quarters of the world's opium last year, and the trade brought in $2.3 billion, more than half of the nation's gross domestic product.