Afghan fighting kills 1, injures 3

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) --A Romanian soldier was killed and three U.S. servicemen were injured in separate clashes in southern Afghanistan, officials said.

The causality came as American and Afghan soldiers continued to track insurgents in a remote mountainous area in the east on Wednesday.

The U.S. military said Operation Mountain Resolve in the snowy peaks of eastern Afghanistan won't stop until a terror network in the region bordering Pakistan is destroyed.

"We don't have a timetable," U.S. military spokesman Col. Rodney Davis said in Kabul. "If they decide to give up tomorrow, we'll stop tomorrow."

On Monday, coalition ground forces backed by helicopter gunships fought two groups of insurgents, killing one person. There were no coalition casualties. Davis would not say whether the troops were involved in any more fighting on Tuesday or Wednesday.

At the same time, he dismissed "as absolutely not true" reports that nine Americans were killed in another clash.

The Arab satellite television station Al-Arabiya on Tuesday broadcast what it said was footage of a Taliban attack on a U.S. patrol in Afghanistan that allegedly took place in the last two weeks. It claimed nine U.S. servicemen were killed.

A Romanian soldier was shot to death and another was injured Tuesday in southern Afghanistan when a convoy of armored transporters was fired on by unidentified attackers in south Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, Romanian officials said in Bucharest. They identified the dead soldier as Sgt. Maj. Iosif Silviu Fogorasi. He was 33.

Romania, a former communist country, has 450 troops serving in Afghanistan.

Gen. Said Mohammad, head of Afghan forces in the region, said Wednesday the attack came when five Romanian armored cars were stopped at a roadblock south of Kandahar's airport, after returning from Spin Boldak town near the Pakistan border. He said the Romanian soldiers returned fire and killed Fogorasi's assailant, who was apparently wearing a military uniform.

Mohammad ruled out Taliban involvement.

Davis, the U.S. military spokesman, said three U.S. special forces soldiers in the coalition were slightly wounded by shrapnel during an hour-long clash with several combatants in southeastern Paktika province, close to the Pakistan border, on Monday.

The three coalition soldiers returned to duty after receiving medical treatment. Their names were being withheld for privacy, Davis said Wednesday.

Attacks against coalition forces and international relief agencies have increased lately in southern Afghanistan, where the support base of the Taliban was located before being defeated two years ago by a U.S.-led invasion.

On Tuesday, a car bomb exploded outside two U.N. aid offices in Kandahar, wounding an Afghan U.N. guard and an Afghan civilian nearby. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Kandahar's police chief blamed Taliban and al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government wields only limited power beyond Kabul. Outside the capital, warlords control some areas and others suffer fighting by al-Qaida, the Taliban and forces loyal to renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister.

Operation Mountain Resolve was launched Friday in Nuristan and neighboring Kunar province, 150 kilometers (95 miles) northeast of Kabul, and close to the border with Pakistan.

Davis told reporters that American soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division's "Warrior Brigade" and Afghan militia were in some of the toughest terrain the military has seen in Afghanistan, with fighting taking place around 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) above sea level.