US defence secretary arrives in Afghanistan

Kandahar: The United States plans to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said as he arrived in the country on Thursday.

"We're going to try and get two additional brigade combat teams into Afghanistan by summertime," Gates told reporters on his plane en route to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

One brigade combat team, which includes around 3,500 soldiers, is already scheduled to deploy in January to Afghanistan.

Currently about 65,000 foreign troops, about 31,000 of them from the United States serve in Afghanistan.