Militants attacked a remote US base in eastern Afghanistan with rockets and heavy machine-guns, sparking a battle that killed a bystander, the military said yesterday. The main American base in the south also came under rocket assault.

　　At least a dozen guerrillas assailed the outpost at Nangalam, about 170 kilometers east of the capital Kabul, in Kunar Province early on Tuesday morning.

　　The attackers shot about 20 rockets then opened fire on the base, which houses about 100 US Marines and special forces, but inflicted no American casualties, military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty said.

　　US forces responded with gunfire and called in an A-10 ground attack aircraft.

　　He added an Afghan civilian wounded in the crossfire died in hospital in the provincial capital Asadabad.

　　Kunar is the northernmost of a string of troubled Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan where the 13,000-strong US-led coalition is focusing its campaign against militants.

　　At the southern end of that arc, rockets were fired early yesterday at the US base at the airport near Kandahar, Afghanistan's second city.

　　Hilferty said there were two rockets fired but no injuries.

　　He also revealed the military would not be releasing the findings of a probe into a December 6 airstrike that killed nine children last year near a village in Ghazni Province.

　　In Casteau, Belgium, NATO's top commander, conceding that the alliance's response to a UN request to expand its presence in Afghanistan has been slow, sought yesterday to increase pressure on reluctant allies to cough up troops and equipment this week.

　　"The force has to be generated. I would like it to be done as quickly as possible," said US Marine General James L. Jones.

　　Jones spoke to reporters at NATO's military headquarters in southern Belgium on the eve of a meeting of allied commanders to generate forces for the mission, which is currently limited to 6,400.

　　(The Associated Press)