US May Send More Troops to Afghanistan

WASHINGTON, March 6 – The Pentagon said today that the United States might send more troops to Afghanistan, where Americans are engaged in some of the bloodiest fighting in the five-month campaign there.

"We'll put what is needed to do the job" in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a regular news briefing. The current American military strength there is 5,200 to 5,300 troops, said Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who runs the day-to-day operations in Afghanistan as head of the United States Central Command.

Of those troops, about 800 were taking part in the pitched battle against entrenched Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in eastern Afghanistan as of Tuesday, and that number will be increased by 200 to 300, General Franks said.

Seven Americans were killed in the fighting on Monday, but Mr. Rumsfeld and General Franks cautioned today that the exact circumstances of their deaths are still unclear. In particular, they said, it is not completely certain how a Navy Seal, Petty Officer Neil C. Roberts, died – whether he was executed by guerrilla fighters on the ground after tumbling out of a helicopter, or whether he might have fallen from the helicopter after being shot.

When his comrades realized that Petty Officer Roberts was not aboard the copter, they sent a second helicopter back to rescue him. At first, military authorities said he had apparently been shot to death on the ground, but Mr. Rumsfeld and General Franks said they are not certain that is what happened. General Franks said discrepancies in initial battlefield accounts are to be expected.

"There will be a lot of views on this particular incident and that is not speculation," General Franks said. "I have talked to three, maybe four people who were either present or have reviewed the result of this and it would probably not surprise you that each has a different view of what happened."

In a separate incident which occurred about three hours later, two helicopters dropped Special Forces members into the same area. Al Qaeda and Taliban forces were waiting for the soldiers and a firefight ensued. Six more Americans were killed before American forces returned 12 hours later and rescued them. The rescuers also retrieved the body of Petty Officer Roberts.

Members of the international peace-keeping force in Afghanistan also reported casualties today. Two German and three Danish soldiers were killed in an accident at a munitions site in Kabul, the German Defense Ministry said in Berlin.

The German army chief, Harald Kujat, said that three other soldiers had been seriously injured and that there were a number of minor casualties.

General Franks said that more than 40 Americans had been wounded in the Afghanistan fighting, and that about half of those had been able to return to duty.

The general also said there were three casualties because of altitude sickness. He noted that much of the fighting is taking place more than 10,000 feet above sea level.

Mr. Rumsfeld and General Franks said they were been surprised by the ferocity of the latest fighting. Mr. Rumsfeld said the hundreds of enemy troops, who include Uzbeks and Chechens, are "very hard-line elements, true dead-enders."

General Franks described the enemy as "very hard and capable and dedicated fighters," but he said they would be no match in the end for American forces, who bring their own high dedication to the field and have superior training and equipment.

As they have before, the secretary and the general said the campaign must go on, until it ends in the surrender of the enemy troops – or their deaths.

"You cannot defend against terrorism by hunkering down," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "You simply must go after them."

"It's deadly, it's bad," General Franks said. "It's also war."