KABUL — American special-operations snipers killed nine suspected Taliban militants in the Afghan mountains bordering Pakistan, the military said Saturday, marking one of the U.S. forces' deadliest engagement in months.

The military would not say if the clash marked the start of a promised spring offensive to capture Osama bin Laden, although a spokesman said the fighting began when as many as 40 suspected Taliban tried to flank the position held by U.S. and Afghan troops.

Over the past two weeks, U.S. commanders have pledged what they call a hammer-and-anvil approach for the spring thaw into summer, with the crucial support of Pakistan troops on their own side of the Afghan frontier.

Under that plan, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region where terror suspects are thought to be hiding becomes the anvil against which these suspects would be hammered, the military said.

With bin Laden and other top al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives the subject of redoubled U.S. attention, the world's news crews have launched a spring offensive of their own. U.S. news organizations are rapidly boosting staff in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

But after touting the planned offensive, the U.S. military now appears bent on tamping down expectations.

"I don't have any other information about Osama bin Laden," military spokesman Lt.-Col. Bryan Hilferty told a news conference Saturday at the U.S. base in Kabul.

Hilferty addressed reporters before a budding almond tree, its white blooms testifying to the warming air in the Kabul valley, and the melting snow in the Afghanistan-Pakistan mountains where bin Laden may be hiding.

"If I knew where he was, I would go get him,' he said. In January, Hilferty had said he was "sure" the United States and its allies would catch bin Laden by the end of the year.

Pakistan's interior minister echoed that sentiment in a television interview broadcast Saturday, saying it is only a matter of time before bin Laden and his followers are captured.

"There is an operation going on," Faisal Saleh Hayyat told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya satellite channel. "Osama bin Laden or some of his followers will probably be captured within days or weeks if these operations continue. Also, perhaps it will take more time until they are captured."

Hilferty on Saturday did not specifically answer a question about whether the latest operations were the start of the promised spring offensive, reminding reporters that there had been patrols throughout the winter as well.

The Friday operation in which the Taliban fighters were killed involved a roughly 10-man U.S. special operations group, Hilferty said. It occurred near Orgun, 32 kilometres from the Pakistan border. None of the U.S. or Afghan soldiers was injured or killed.

On Thursday, U.S. forces detained 14 suspected Taliban north of Khost, another Afghan town near the Pakistan border, Hilferty said.

He denied one recent report that U.S. forces were hunting bin Laden in Tora Bora, the same cave complex pounded by U.S. forces throughout December 2001 in the belief the al-Qaida leader was hiding there.

No forces under U.S. Central Command were carrying out any extraordinary operations there, Hilferty said.

Mayor Haji Abdullah, whose Pachir Wa Agam district abuts Tora Bora, told The Associated Press he had seen neither U.S. military vehicles nor aircraft in recent days. Local residents agreed.

On Feb. 24, Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf launched what was only Pakistan's fourth sweep in tribal-held lands bordering Afghanistan - traditionally off-limits to the country's military.

Simultaneously, Pakistan's government was arresting tribal leaders for failing to turn over terror suspects, employing a British colonial-era practice.

American tactics inside Afghanistan are changing as well. U.S. commanders are deploying smaller troop units, sent out with a mission to become better acquainted in Afghan communities.

Hilferty said Saturday the tactic already is yielding better intelligence.

So far, however, there have been no big breaks - or at least none that have been announced.