U.S. troops exchange fire with Afghan allies

KABUL, Afghanistan -- American troops on patrol in southeastern Afghanistan exchanged fire with allied Afghan soldiers at a checkpoint, a senior Afghan commander said Thursday. No casualties were reported on either side.

Gary Tallman, a U.S. Army spokesman at the Bagram air base he was not aware of the incident.

The 10-minute firefight began Tuesday night when Afghan soldiers near Zormat district stopped the Americans and asked them for a password required for traveling on roads after a 9 p.m. curfew, commander Abul Matin Husainkhil said by satellite phone from nearby Gardez.

Didn't know password

He said that the Americans did not know the password and the two sides briefly engaged each other with automatic weapons. It was not clear who began shooting first.

Husainkhil, who commands troops loyal to transitional President Hamid Karzai, played down the incident, calling it "a misunderstanding."

He said it occurred about a half-mile west of Zormat in Paktia province, the same area where U.S.-led forces launched a new hunt last weekend for al-Qaida fighters.

U.S. military spokesman Col. Roger King said Thursday coalition troops in that region detained three people and discovered several small weapons caches.

He said the coalition was trying to "find, capture or kill" al-Qaida members in an operation involving U.S. conventional and special operations troops as well as allied Afghan fighters.

King spoke at Bagram air base, the U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan. He gave no other details and did not say how long the mission would last.

Apparently describing the same mission, an Afghan military chief in the southeast said Tuesday that American and Afghan forces had detained four people in a house-to-house sweep through a town.

In other developments, U.S. special forces in Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan recovered two weapons caches, including a light machine gun with 300 rounds and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher with six rounds, during a vehicle search Wednesday.