The purpose of the strike was "to destroy a command element of the Taliban terrorist organisation which was responsible for facilitating the movement of anti-aircraft weapons in southern Afghanistan," it said in a statement.

"The air strike, using precision-guided munitions, targeted the suspected terrorist's vehicle where he stopped to meet with other suspected terrorists in an isolated area."

The strike was in the Gereshk district in the centre of Helmand.

There have been suspicions that the militants, who are said to be allied with Al-Qaeda, are trying to acquire anti-aircraft weapons for their fight against NATO and coalition troops but this has not been confirmed.

"We do know that the enemy is trying to get their hands on shoulder-fired air defence weapons," International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokesman Colonel Tom Collins told AFP.

"I am not aware of any confirmed reports that they have received them. We certainly know that they want them. To my knowledge there has not been a single helicopter that was knocked down (in Afghanistan) by a surface-to-air missile."

He said forces in Afghanistan had "counter measures" should such weapons be acquired.

Nine US helicopters -- including two operated by private security firms -- have been lost in Iraq since January 20, most of them to hostile fire.

Afghanistan's Helmand, where most of the 5,200 British troops in the country are based, has seen a surge in military and Taliban activity this year with hardcore Taliban leaders said to be in the province, the country's top opium producer.

The NATO-led ISAF is carrying out its largest operation with Afghan forces, in the northern part of Helmand, to root out Taliban and foreign fighters and narco-traffickers they are allied with.

Operation Achilles was launched on Tuesday and involves 5,500 troops from Afghanistan, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States. Two British soldiers have died in combat during the operation.

A top Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, acknowledged in an interview with AFP Saturday that the NATO force had superior fire power but said his men would win because they had "faith" -- a reference to what Taliban call a "holy war."

"No one in the world has better weapons than NATO," he said in a telephone interview with an AFP correspondent who has spoken to him many times previously.

"They have got better weapons but we will defeat them with the power of faith and belief," he said.

earlier related report
German parliament approves Tornado jets for Afghanistan
Berlin (AFP) March 9 - The German parliament on Friday approved a decision to send six Tornado jets to Afghanistan to carry out reconnaissance missions for NATO in the fight against the Taliban. Members of the Bundestag lower house approved the mission by 405 to 157 votes.

Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung has said the aircraft will be manned by about 500 German soldiers and could be deployed in Afghanistan by mid-April.

The Tornados, which can supply aerial images of Taliban positions, will be stationed at Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan.

Germany has in recent months come under strong pressure from its NATO allies to increase its military presence in Afghanistan as international forces seek to crush a Taliban insurgency.

But the Tornado mission has proved highly controversial and Jung has had to give reluctant MPs assurances that the fighter jets will not be sent into combat.

Critics of the mission however say that it amounts to a combat intervention as the information gathered by the planes will be used by NATO allies to attack Taliban positions.

They have also warned that this was a short step from deploying German ground troops in the insurgency-hit south.

"I think these concerns are unfounded," said Peter Struck, the parliamentary head of the Social Democrats that govern Germany in coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats.

German troops hold the command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the relatively stable north of Afghanistan, but Berlin has resisted calls to extend the mission of its 3,000 troops to the south.

Government spokesman Thomas Steg on Friday denied that Germany has had further calls from NATO to send combat forces to southern Afghanistan, where NATO commanders have warned that hard fighting lies ahead this year.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at an EU summit in Brussels on Friday that he had pressed his fellow EU leaders to bolster troop contributions.

Germany remains wary of sending troops into combat because of its World War II past and the outcome of the vote on Friday was the most divided result in recent history on a German military mission abroad.

The mandate for the Tornado mission will run until October 13 when the current UN mandate for the 35,000-strong ISAF operation expires.

A German engineer working for an aid organisation was shot dead in the northern Afghan province of Sari Pul on Thursday.

Local authorities have arrested eight suspects and said it was not clear whether they were bandits or Islamic militants.

earlier related report
Analysis: Germany's Tornado challenge
by Stefan Nicola
UPI Germany Correspondent Berlin (UPI) March 8 - Germany's Parliament Friday decides on a controversial mission of German reconnaissance jets in Afghanistan, where a NATO spring offensive aims to drive back the Taliban.

The German government agreed last month to send eight Panavia Tornado reconnaissance planes -- six in constant flying, with two back-up planes -- and roughly 500 additional soldiers to Afghanistan to aid the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

The Tornados are tasked with identifying potential targets for ISAF and the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom, and will relay back to mission control highly detailed photos of the ground in Afghanistan. The jets could fly their first missions as early as mid-April, but as Germany's lawmakers have to sign off on any military move the country makes, the deployment first has to be voted on Friday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung have advertised the mission at every possible venue, saying it was vital that Germany helps NATO in securing Afghanistan, an overall mission that must not fail.

While no one in Germany expects the vote to be negative, the mission has come under fire from several opposition politicians who fear the focus of NATO's security mission in Afghanistan is turning from civil reconstruction efforts to mainly military operations.

Indeed, ISAF on Tuesday launched "Operation Achilles," an offensive comprised of more than 4,500 NATO troops and 1,000 Afghan soldiers countering a threatened spring offensive by the Taliban.

Norman Paech, an international law expert from the far-left Left Party, told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper in an interview that Operation Achilles and the Tornado mission, which will cost Berlin an estimated $45 million, documents the beginning of a war situation.

"We fear that an increasing militarization of the conflict through the Tornado mission and the offensive destabilizes the country even more, and throws it into Iraq-like conditions," he said.

The Left Party is for a quick pull-out from Afghanistan, a view that was backed Thursday by Tom Koenigs, the United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan, who warned in an interview with German ARD radio that the window for foreign troops in Afghanistan is closing.

The massive presence of NATO troops will not be sustainable "for us nor the Afghans," he said. "First of all they can do it better, second they can do it cheaper and third it will be more acceptable."

Germany currently has around 3,000 soldiers stationed with ISAF, but they are confined to relatively peaceful northern Afghanistan. Germany has led the Provincial Reconstruction Teams in the north, and has been very successful in building up infrastructure, schools and other municipal institutions.

Nevertheless, Germany has in the past come under fire from NATO officials for confining their troops to the north while the death toll in the south is rising. In light of the expected spring offensive of the Taliban, the Tornados are a much-needed support for the U.S., Canadian, Dutch and other soldiers fighting in the south.

Observers say the German government is eager to prove to its allies that it wants to provide additional aid in Afghanistan. The deployment of reconnaissance planes is seen as a relatively safe way to do so, at least when it comes to human casualties.

While the Tornado planes -- also used by the British Royal Air Force in Iraq -- are able to carry laser-guided bombs and air-to-air missiles, the mandate explicitly cancels out German fighting missions. Nevertheless, the mission is no walk in the park: German pilots should be aware of the danger from Man-Portable Air Defence Systems, or MANPADS, like ground-to-air Stinger rockets a single Taliban warrior can shoulder-fire. These rockets can hit aircraft at a range of up to 15,700 feet and at altitudes between 600 and 12,500 feet.

The Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, had to confirm a media report that the Germans don't have the capacity to rescue their own pilots in case they are shot down -- they lack the necessary helicopters. In an emergency, U.S., British or Canadian troops would have to embark on a rescue mission.

While some are worried about the well-being of the German soldiers in Afghanistan, others fear that in the wake of beefing up the Afghanistan engagement, Germans at home will increasingly move into the gridlock of Islamist terrorism.

Heinz Fromm, head of Germany's Verfassungsschutz, a domestic intelligence agency, told online daily Netzeitung in an interview Thursday that he had no reason to believe the Tornado mission would increase the terror threat in Germany. But he added that with or without deploying the reconnaissance planes, the danger of a terrorist attack in Germany remained "considerable."

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