The rockets missed, and the culprits fled in two vehicles as Afghan troops gave chase.

Engineer Mohammad Yusuf Pashtoon, spokesman for Kandahar Governor Gul Agha, told reporters on Thursday that the attackers had been traced to a village 6-7 miles southwest of the airport.

"We are looking for the culprits. We have a system of tracing footprints with local experts -- they look for tracks on the ground," he said.

"They traced the people to a nearby village, so we are now looking for those people. We still don't know exactly who those people are."

Pashtoon said Afghan investigators were sharing information with U.S. officials at the airport. He said Afghan security patrols had been stepped up in the wake of the attack.

The U.S.-controlled airfield has come under sporadic attack since the Taliban fled Kandahar in December.

Two soldiers were injured in an exchange of fire on the perimeter earlier this month.

But Kandahar officials have said they believe that incident was an accident -- irking the Americans who say it was definitely a deliberate attack.

Kandahar was the Taliban's birthplace and main stronghold, and the last major Afghan city to slip from their grasp.

Some Afghans in the city say they resent the presence of foreign troops on their soil, and relations between residents and the U.S. forces soured when more than 5,000 pilgrims hoping to travel to Mecca from Kandahar airport were told no planes would leave from the city.

Many of the pilgrims have accused the U.S. forces of refusing to allow them to make the pilgrimage.

The Kandahar government says the United States did not try to block the Haj flights, but that damage to the runway meant it could not be used by large passenger aircraft.

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