Fresh Afghan troops move in to combat remaining al-Qaida

Allied Afghan commanders have sent fresh troops to aid US-led forces battling al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

Soldiers returning from the front report continued exchanges, although less intense than in recent days.

Minesweepers are clearing the way through the mountains of eastern Afghanistan so allied troops can press on toward Shah-e-Kot.

There are hundreds of militant soldiers and their families bunkered down in the town.

Hundreds of Afghan troops ringed its labyrinth of caves to block the escape of any renegade fighters.

"They can't escape. They're surrounded. Slowly, slowly we are pushing in," said front-line commander, Abdul Matin Hasan Khiel.

Yesterday, in the deadliest air and ground offensive of the five-month-old war, seven American soldiers were killed when al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, using machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, fired on two Chinook troop carrying helicopters.

The helicopters had been taking part in the largest US led air and ground offensive of the Afghan war, designed to pound the renegade militants with waves and waves of air strikes and squeeze them out of their hide-outs.

Roseuddin, an Afghan civilian who was in the village of Shah-e-Kot shortly before the attacks began, estimated the al-Qaida and Taliban force at about 600, commanded by a former Taliban officer, Saif Rahman.

He said the fighters had been storing provisions for months in anticipation of a bloody siege. Neither the former Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar nor al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden was believed to be in the area.