TASHKENT, Oct 6: The vanguard of a US ground force deployed to the Afghan frontier on Saturday, Uzbek officials said, as Taliban fighters fired missiles at what they claimed were US planes circling over Kabul.

Several US transport planes landed near the Uzbek border town of Termez, aviation and regional officials said, after Washington ordered 1,000 crack troops from the 10th Mountain Division to secure a forward base.

The 10th Mountain Division comes under the US Army’s Special Operations Command and are trained for cold-weather and high altitude warfare. They could be used as a rapid reaction force or carry out rescue missions for downed pilots.

Termez is close to the abandoned Soviet military base of Kokaida, which served Moscow’s forces during their ill-fated decade-long attempt to occupy Afghanistan, which ended in 1989.

It was not clear whether the US planes arrived at Termez civilian airport, as one official said, or at a military airbase outside the town, as another officer of the local administration said.

It stands 50 kilometres north of the Taliban-held town of Mazar-i-Sharif, which has recently been threatened by an opposition offensive.

Earlier the Taliban fired missiles at a plane which circled Kabul at high altitude for around half an hour before flying off apparently unscathed, eyewitnesses and officials said.

“We think it was a US spy plane,” an official at the Afghan information ministry said. “Missiles were fired at the plane and some fighters were even shooting their Kalashnikovs.”

SCOUTING MISSIONS: Exiled Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said in Tehran that dozens of US troops disguised as Afghans were on scouting missions inside the country.