Official: U.S. troops train commandos in Pakistan
(CNN) -- U.S. troops have been in Pakistan as recently as Saturday to train Pakistani Special Services Group (SSG) commandos, a U.S. military official said Wednesday.
The contingent, consisting of a small number of U.S. military advisers, has been focusing on training the Pakistanis in day and night helicopter air assault operations, the official said.
Training operations have been taking place in northern Pakistan at SSG headquarters near Peshawar, the official said.
The presence of U.S. military trainers in Pakistan is considered politically sensitive, and the Pakistani government does not publicly acknowledge the presence of any U.S. forces in the country.
Lt. Gen. David Barno, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, recently traveled to SSG headquarters to review capabilities of Pakistani forces -- including operations in military helicopters provided by the United States, The New York Times reported this week.
Analysts believe the Pakistani military is training for operations in North Waziristan, a tribal region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that is said to be sheltering al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
About 18,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Afghanistan, more than three years after U.S.-led forces invaded and toppled the nation's Taliban regime that had harbored Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorists.
In the Uruzgan province of south-central Afghanistan on Tuesday, a U.S. soldier was killed in a gun battle with insurgents, a U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday. The soldier's unit was on patrol when it was ambushed, he said.
Bin Laden is thought to be hiding somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but intelligence officials in both countries said there has been no sign of him for the past 20 months, according to a January report in Time magazine.
In November, Pakistan announced that it was ending a two-year operation against al Qaeda in the tribal area of South Waziristan.
The mountainous border region is divided into North Waziristan, inhabited by farming Wazir tribes, and South Waziristan, populated by semi-nomadic Mahsuds.
The Pakistan army entered the area in 2002 to launch an operation against al Qaeda and Taliban fighters as well as extend the authority of the government to the remote tribal regions.
Pakistani generals at the time said the pullout would not halt the hunt for bin Laden in other areas, including North Waziristan.
CNN's Barbara Starr contributed to this report.
