Pakistan's armed forces dispatched troops to a remote southern region bordering Afghanistan to investigate local reports that a U.S. military helicopter had crashed there early this morning, but U.S. and Pakistani officials said they had no information about a downed chopper.
Pakistani military officials said the helicopter was reported to have crashed about 35 miles from the Afghan border while en route to an air base in the city of Dalbandin that is one of three Pakistani military facilities used by U.S. forces for logistical and rescue operations. The officials said their reports did not identify the type of helicopter or the number of people aboard.
The local reports could not be independently verified.
The Pentagon issued a statement today saying that it had "received no report of a U.S. military helicopter going down over Pakistan or Afghanistan." Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said that it had no independent verification of a helicopter crash.
"What we have found out so far is that there has been no such incident," said Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi.
But military officials in the area, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were certain that a helicopter had gone down near the Afghan border. They said they could not confirm that the helicopter belonged to the U.S. military, but they did not know of any Pakistani military helicopters operating in the area early this morning.
The Afghan Islamic Press, a Pakistan-based news agency that is close to Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, reported today that a U.S. helicopter involved in airstrikes against Afghanistan had crashed near the Pakistani town of Aminabad, about 20 miles from Dalbandin.
On Friday, a U.S. helicopter on a Special Forces mission in northern Afghanistan was forced down by bad weather, but the crew was rescued by a second helicopter on the same mission, Pentagon officials said. Four crew members were injured in the crash.
On Oct. 20, two U.S. soldiers were killed in a helicopter accident in Pakistan. Two days later, a U.S. helicopter trying to extract the wreckage of the crashed Black Hawk helicopter was fired upon and had to abort its mission after returning fire, according to Pentagon officials.
Meanwhile, Pakistani police officials reported that attacks have been made against two Pakistani airports in the last four days. The officials said they believe the assaults may have been conducted by individuals or groups opposed to the U.S. use of Pakistani airfields to support bombing and Special Forces missions in Afghanistan.
Police said five or six armed men charged into an open-air pavilion at the Quetta airport in southwestern Pakistan late Monday night, killing one police security guard in a shootout. The attackers escaped, police said. The Quetta airport, a joint civilian and military facility like most of Pakistan's air bases, is used for a few civilian flights and Pakistani military craft, but has not been a major base of operations for the U.S. military.
On Saturday night, a Pakistan army soldier was shot and killed while patrolling an inner perimeter at the Jacobabad airport in southeastern Sindh province. The base is one of the main Pakistani facilities used by the U.S. military to support operations in Afghanistan. It is protected by four rings of security forces -- Pakistani police, paramilitary troops, army soldiers and U.S. Marines, according to Pakistani officials.
Pakistani authorities have publicly labeled the shooting of the army guard an "accident," although sources said some investigators are convinced it was deliberate.
Officials said it was unclear whether the soldier was killed by sniper fire or at close range. Intelligence authorities are investigating the incident, the second shooting -- but first fatality -- at Jacobabad since U.S. military operations began.
Jacobabad also has been the scene of demonstrations protesting the U.S. military presence.
In other developments, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said the U.S. consulate in Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city, received a letter in late October containing a white powder that has tested positive for anthrax.
The letter was postmarked in Pakistan, but the mark was smudged and illegible, said the spokesman, Mark Wentworth. He said the envelope bore no return address.
Wentworth also said that U.S. officials have determined that a man who died in Taliban custody over the weekend was not a U.S. citizen, as Taliban officials had claimed. "There's nothing that indicates that he's an American," Wentworth said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been asked by the Taliban to transport the body to Pakistan, said it had identified a relative who is in Pakistan and that it had asked that person to claim the body. ICRC officials would not give the man's name.
"We've been in contact with the family but the right person is not at the right place to pick up the body," said Pascal Duport, deputy head of the Red Cross delegation to Afghanistan.
Taliban officials said that the man, who entered Afghanistan using the name Mazhar Ayub, said under questioning that his real name was John Bolton and that he was an American. The Taliban officials said the man, who claimed to be a relief worker, was arrested two weeks ago in southern Afghanistan and later died in a hospital of natural causes.
Duport said Red Cross workers in Afghanistan have not inquired about the cause of death. "Asking those questions could be sensitive for their personal security," he said.
Moore reported from Islamabad. 
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