WASHINGTON, March 5: The United States has engaged US ground troops in significant numbers for the first time to take on Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, a development attributed to lessons learned in the Afghan conflict.

In December, US forces were content to play a subordinate role in the mountains of Tora Bora against the same enemy, under siege for two weeks by Afghan allies on the ground.

Small numbers of US special forces were engaged in the conflict, but the main US contribution came from bombing raids.

The outcome of the Tora Bora offensive saw the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces, and possibly their leader Osama bin Laden, give the attackers the slip and melt away in the rugged terrain.

The new operation, codenamed Anaconda after the snake that encircles and crushes its prey, engages hundreds of regular US troops on the ground in a hands-on combat role.

Altogether some 2,000 allies troops including around 950 US regular and special forces troops, supported by about 200 commandos from Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany and Norway are on the ground, according to the Pentagon.

General Tommy Franks, who commands the Afghan military operation, said the use of ground troops did not constitute a change of tactics.

“What happens is any time we conduct a military operation, what we will do is we’ll first off take into account the enemy and how an enemy may be disposed,” he said.

“I think we learn both the positive and the critical lessons from each one of these operations. And so, of course, Tora Bora was considered as we decided what we were going to do for Anaconda.”

He said US forces were leading the attack and Afghan allies were being use over a wider area to prevent the enemy from escaping.

“We have Afghan forces in blocking positions at this point, and we have the American forces engaged as you see them (offensively),” he said.

He said that grounds troops, rather than air power, were more effective against enemy scattered across rugged mountain terrain in small groups.

Small units were difficult to pinpoint from the air and the answer “is to put people on the ground, and that’s what we’ve done in this case, and that’s the reason we did it that way.”

FRENCH PLANES: French warplanes launched air strikes in eastern Afghanistan for the second day running on Tuesday, taking part in a US air and ground operation against Al Qaeda fighters holed up in the region, French officials in Paris said.