2 U.S. Soldiers Die in Afghan Clash

Two U.S. Army paratroopers were killed Friday and four other soldiers were wounded in a skirmish with possible Taliban remnants in violent southeastern Afghanistan, in the latest of a series of incidents that has prompted officials here to implore Pakistan to tighten security along the frontier.

The death of the soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division came as the U.S. government announced that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld will visit U.S. troops at Bagram air base near here on Sunday. Rumsfeld also plans to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and will visit U.S. troops in Iraq on the same trip.

The killing of the soldiers, whose names have been withheld pending notification of relatives, indicates that the terrorism war in Afghanistan is far from over.

Thirty soldiers in the U.S.-led coalition have died in combat since Operation Enduring Freedom was launched in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

An additional 36 military personnel have died in accidents and air crashes.

The remote southeastern corner of Afghanistan has been a constant scene of incursions by enemy fighters who cross from mountain refuges in Pakistan to fire 107-millimeter rockets or launch attacks on Bagram air base or patrols before fleeing back across the border.

While praising Pakistan’s cooperation in hunting down Al Qaeda fugitives, the U.S. military repeatedly has requested that Pakistan’s government better patrol the border area to control what allied forces view as a haven for terrorists.

Karzai urged Pakistani leaders to do more to counter terrorism, while on a state visit to Pakistan this week.

The porous border was a topic of discussion when Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. special representative to Afghanistan, visited the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, this month. Khalilzad later told reporters here in the Afghan capital that he had warned Pakistani leaders that an insecure border threatened the fledgling Afghan state, and, by extension, U.S. interests.

The forces of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has pronounced a jihad on all foreign forces here, are also thought to be operating in the border area.

Pakistan has denied that it promotes terrorism, saying it has arrested hundreds of suspected terrorists and turned them over to the United States. Pakistan has also stationed 70,000 soldiers along the border with Afghanistan since the Sept. 11 attacks.

After U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime, many surviving elements were believed to have fled to unsettled tribal areas in Pakistan, along with Al Qaeda members.

One soldier died at the scene and the other after midnight at Bagram air base. The four wounded were being treated at Bagram, which is about 30 miles north of here.

Seriously wounded soldiers are often airlifted immediately to a military hospital in Germany.

The fatalities occurred after a U.S. platoon responded to reports of suspicious activity near the Shkin fire base in Paktika province, just hundreds of yards from the border with Pakistan. The U.S. forces were fired on by about 20 enemy fighters operating from a site where rocket attacks had been launched against Bagram previously.

A second platoon responded when the enemy fighters fled into Pakistan. Close air support was called in, including U.S. Air Force F-16 fighters and A-10 Thuderbolts, but no targets were fired upon.

At least three enemy fighters were believed to have been killed in the skirmish.

Two U.S. service members were killed March 29 when their four-vehicle convoy was ambushed in Helmand province near Kandahar -- the most recent American combat deaths here before Friday. One victim was in the Special Forces, the other an airman.