Afghan Insurgents Capture Us Soldier, Pentagon Says

Insurgents in eastern Afghanistan have captured a US soldier, the Pentagon said today as US forces launched a major offensive in the southern part of the country.

A US official said the soldier went missing on Tuesday, adding: "We are using all of our resources to find him and provide for his safe return."

The US official declined to provide details of where the soldier had been captured, but an Afghan police official said he went missing in the Mullakheil area of the eastern Paktika province during the day.

General Nabi Mullakheil said there was a US base in the area.

Unnamed military officials in Afghanistan told the Washington Post the soldier appeared to have walked off his base into an unsecured area.

The newspaper said it was not immediately clear why he had done so.

Other reports said the soldier and three Afghan soldiers had been captured by the Taliban's Haqqani faction, which is believed to control large areas of eastern Afghanistan.

The group, controlled by the insurgent leader Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Sirajuddin, is suspected to be behind a number of spectacular attacks in recent years, including the suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, in which more than 50 people were killed last July.

Mullah Sangeen, a senior Taliban commander, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location that the soldier had been taken as a patrol walked from a base in Paktika province. He said the soldier would be held until Taliban fighters held by US forces were released.

The news broke as thousands of US marines launched an offensive involving helicopter-borne troops in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province.

The operation is the first serious test of Barack Obama's strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The missing soldier was not part of it.