4 U.S. troops die in Afghan clashes

KABUL, Afghanistan — Three American troops were killed today in a clash with insurgents in southern Afghanistan, which is likely to be the scene of escalating battles in coming months. A fourth U.S. service member died today of wounds suffered in separate fighting in the east, near the border with Pakistan, military officials said.

Also today, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force disclosed the death of another American service member in an attack a day earlier in the south. That followed the deaths on Saturday of a U.S. Marine and a British journalist in a powerful roadside bomb explosion in restive Helmand province.

The south is to be the focus of a major troop buildup this year by the Obama administration. Most of the new arrivals will be sent to Helmand and Kandahar provinces, where American, British, Canadian and other allied forces have been taking significant casualties. That swath of the south is considered the heartland of the insurgency.

Fighting in Afghanistan often drops off with the onset of winter weather. But so far this year, the winter has been unusually mild, and clashes have continued apace.

U.S. military officials said in a terse statement that today’s (MON’s) deaths in the south came in an “engagement with enemy forces,” but provided no details about either that fighting or the separate clash in the east.

In recent months, most military casualties have been caused by insurgent-planted roadside bombs, but firefights also break out regularly between Western forces and militant fighters. The insurgents often stage ambushes in the wake of an explosion severe enough to drive foreign troops out of their armored vehicles, or strike as they are patrolling on foot.

The enormous numbers of buried bombs -- so heavy a concentration that commanders describe the devices as forming a “crust” in some areas -- endanger Afghan civilians as well as foreign troops.

Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry today said two Afghan road workers were killed Sunday in Helmand’s Nawa district when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device, close to the area where the Marine and the British journalist had died a day earlier.

The U.S.-led buildup has been forcing the military to scramble to get troops and supplies into place. Today a helicopter made a hard landing -- effectively a controlled crash -- in Helmand province. Its crew was uninjured, but the chopper was disabled, military officials said.

U.S. Marines are preparing to soon launch a major offensive in the Helmand River Valley, commanders have said. The Marines, who arrived in force over the summer, are expected to push into the town of Marja, where many insurgents have taken shelter from fighting elsewhere in the area.

The town, ringed by canals and agricultural fields, is a major hub for narcotics trafficking, and Taliban fighters have long had free rein in the area.

Meanwhile, Afghan and U.S. officials said today that they were moving ahead with plans for a handover of the American-run prison at Bagram air base outside Kabul. Previously, the Bagram facility has been the target of complaints by human rights groups and ex-detainees who reported serious abuses.

A new prison facility has since been opened, and about 750 prisoners, mostly Afghans, are still being held. Some are expected to be shifted into the Afghan prison system.

The date for the handover to the Afghans has not yet been set, but a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, told reporters in Kabul he expected it would take place “within a few months.”

The commander of American detainee operations in Afghanistan, Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward, said at the same news conference that under new rules, suspected insurgents could still be held by the military at field detention sites, but only for “a very short period of time.”

laura.king@latimes.com