Elite troops complete first Afghan raid

US forces today completed their first ground operation in southern Afghanistan, opening up a new phase in the war on terrorism.

Officials confirmed that up to 200 troops were involved in the initial effort and had left Afghan airspace, but refused to co-operate further on the size or nature of the operation.

Additional troops are poised for commando raids in search of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida lieutenants.

The arrival of small numbers of US troops on the ground in Afghanistan marks a shift in the operations to a broader range of military activities, both overt and covert, after nearly two weeks of aerial bombardment, US officials said.

Special operations troops such as the Army’s Green Berets perform many different missions, including assistance to opposition forces and collection of intelligence.

Special forces in southern Afghanistan are supporting the CIA’s effort to encourage ethnic Pashtun leaders to break away from the Taliban militia, a US official said yesterday.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declined to comment on the latest operation but said that the United States was co-ordinating with rebels in northern Afghanistan as well as other anti-Taliban forces.

‘‘There is good co-ordination from the air with the ground in some places, particularly in the north,’’ Rumsfeld told reporters who flew with him yesterday to a Missouri air base to visit crews of B-2 stealth bombers.

‘‘There is not that kind of co-ordination as of yet in the south.’’

In a later session with reporters at Whiteman, Rumsfeld was asked whether the war against terrorism would have to be fought in countries outside Afghanistan in order to be successful.

‘‘There’s no doubt in my mind,’’ he replied.

Separately, US officials said the air assaults that began on October 7 and continued yesterday will intensify soon and focus more directly on frontline troops of the ruling Taliban.

Afghan forces opposing the Taliban are attempting to take advantage of the bombing and are hoping for additional US military assistance. Rumsfeld said that the opposition forces known as the Northern Alliance have asked for and received US aid, including ammunition or money to buy it.

Yesterday Tony Blair met French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder the other two main European military contributors to the US-led coalition to discuss the next steps in the campaign.

The disclosure that special forces were inside Afghanistan came as little surprise following signals in recent days from both US President George Bush and Mr Blair that the campaign was moving into a new phase.

Earlier this week it was confirmed that powerful US Spectre AC-130 gunships typically used to provide close air support for special operations had been in action over Afghanistan.

And it emerged on Thursday that helicopter-borne special forces units were on board the American aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, which had been sent to the Gulf without its normal complement of fighter planes so that it could act as a platform for special operations.

A spokesman for the Taliban embassy in Islamabad, Sohail Shaheen, defiantly dismissed the deployment of special forces and taunted the Americans, challenging them to send a full-scale invasion force.

‘‘Fifteen or 20 troops will be able to do nothing. If they want to send in soldiers, they should send in 100,000. Then it can be a fight between our soldiers and theirs,’’ he said.

The ambassador, Abdul Salam Zaeef, who had just returned from a visit back to Afghanistan, said he had met both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

He said the Taliban leadership had survived the bombing campaign without casualties and dismissed reports of defections, saying they remained ‘‘strong and united’’.

Earlier the Taliban confirmed that a veteran associate comrade of bin Laden, the Egyptian militant Abu Baseer al-Masri, had been killed.

The Afghan Islamic Press said he died when a grenade accidentally exploded in his hands near Jalalabad on October 11, and denied reports that he had been killed by a US bomb.

Last night, a former high-ranking officer with the US Army warned against using large numbers of land forces to attack Afghanistan.

John Howard, a retired brigadier general with the 10th Mountain Division, said the inhospitable terrain made it more prudent to employ snatch squads of elite forces, like the SAS, the US Rangers or the Delta Force.

He told Radio Five Live’s Drive programme: ‘‘These forces can strike, take out their target and then get out again.

‘‘The Russians entered with a large conventional land force and subsequently got involved in a conflict which dragged on and on and on, not unlike the US experience in Vietnam.’’