AFGHANISTAN: As the war in Afghanistan intensifies, al-Qaeda reinforcements have joined fighters in the caves and mountains where a battle is raging.
The al-Qaeda fighters in the eastern city of Gardez and its environs have surprised the US by the ferocity of their response.
"I don't think we knew what we were getting into this time, but I think we're beginning to adjust," Sgt Maj Mark Nielson told journalists.
Eight US soldiers have been killed since the operation began last weekend.
It has been learned that one of the soldiers was captured by al-Qaeda and executed with a shot to the head, as Pentagon officials watched a live video taken by a Predator drone aircraft.
Meanwhile in Kabul, two German and three Danish peacekeepers died in a munitions accident.
Hundreds of US troops were flown to the battlefield to counter the al-Qaeda-Taliban fighters, believed to be strengthening their positions.
In what has developed into the biggest battle of the war, the US military said 500 of 1,000 rebels, including some high-ranking leaders, had already died in six days of fighting.
But Gen "Buster" Hagenbeck, commander of "Operation Anaconda", said more fundamentalist followers in the area were rushing to join in a "holy war" against the United States.
"We have intelligence from a variety of sources that the local fundamentalists have called a jihad against the Americans and their coalition partners," he told reporters at Bagram air base, 30 miles north of the capital, Kabul.
He said local leaders had been funnelling and infiltrating fighters into this area.
"In our estimation, in the last 24 to 48 hours, the number of enemy that we've fought over time is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 600 to 700."
Afghan commanders said the battle was being fought along a six-mile front line of bunkers and caves up to the 3,000-metre peaks around the village of Shahi Kot.
Gen Hagenbeck said only about 150-200 enemy fighters had been in the area when the US-led attack began on Saturday east of Gardez, capital of Pakita province, 95 miles south of Kabul.
There were five other Western casualties yesterday, when two German and three Danish peacekeepers died in an accident at a munitions site.
"There have been five deaths, of which two were German and three were Danish," German army chief Mr Harald Kujat told a news conference.
Mr Kujat said three other military were seriously injured in the accident, at a demolition range about 1½ miles from the German military base on the outskirts of Kabul.
"The dead and injured were setting up charges to blow up a surface-to-air missile," a German officer, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters in Kabul.
In his first remarks on the progress of the biggest US-led attack of the five-month war, the interim Afghan leader, Mr Hamid Karzai, said the offensive was succeeding.
Asked how the operation was progressing, he replied: "Successful, successful."
So far the international security force, with 4,500 troops, has been confined to Kabul and its environs, despite pleas from Mr Karzai to extend it to other cities.