American soldier killed in Afghanistan

United States forces in Afghanistan were preparing to fly home their first body bag for more than four months as the death of one of their soldiers raised further questions about Washington's claims of success in the war on al-Qa'ida.

The killing came in the same week as a United Nations monitoring group warned that al-Qa'ida had set up new small, mobile camps in eastern Afghanistan, and had a large number of operatives at large. The US military said the dead soldier – whom it did not identify – was shot in a pre-dawn battle in the eastern Paktika province which was serious enough for the Americans to send in air support.

A Sikorsky helicopter used by the international peacekeeping force later crashed in Kabul, killing seven German peacekeepers and two Afghan children on the ground. The cause was not immediately clear, although there were reports of a fire on board.

Two Afghan interpreters died in a grenade explosion at an international peacekeepers' base in Kabul on Friday.

American officials moved swiftly to discourage the view that the killing of the soldier marked the resurgence of al-Qa'ida or the Taliban. That is unlikely to convince critics who argue that Washington is rushing headlong into war with Iraq before it has finished rooting out al-Qa'ida and the Taliban, or has found or killed Osama bin Laden.

US forces are attempting to track down al-Qa'ida and Taliban fighters in the mountains of eastern and north-eastern Afghanistan. They are also searching the same difficult terrain for Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, the former Afghan premier who has been calling for a jihad against the 8,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, who is in Afghanistan, yesterday continued to play down criticism of their performance, not least to avoid denting the case for moving on Iraq.

He told reporters at the Bagram Air Base that the recent attacks on US soldiers had not yet been connected to any particular group. He added: "My assessment is that things continue to improve in Afghanistan for the people of Afghanistan."

But on Tuesday, Michael Chandler, head of the UN group that monitors the flow of money to al-Qa'ida and the Taliban, said that several new al-Qa'ida training camps had been set up in Afghanistan near the Pakistan border.

In Pakistan itself, more evidence emerged that the battle was far from won. Police in Karachi have arrested three men who were planning to attack American diplomats, and seized 250 sacks of fertiliser used in explosives.

A US intelligence officer has told The Independent on Sunday's Robert Fisk that middle-ranking Pakistani army officers are tipping off members of al-Qa'ida about American-organised raids. The Americans had over-estimated the power of their technology, and that al-Qa'ida was "very smart".

Suicide bombers are being recruited and trained in eastern Pakistan, according to Associated Press. They are being offered $50,000 (£30,000) for their families if they carry out suicide attacks in Afghanistan.