Bodies from U.S. copter crash found in Afghanistan 13 found, 7 missing
[KLP Note: So, how do you think these AQ insurgents will treat our Military, who are in uniform....will they be visited by the Doctors immediately, by IORC, by the Senators and Reps, by the MSM, and will they have a prison like Qitmo????]
Thu Jun 30, 2005 11:45 AM ET
reuters.com
By David Brunnstrom
KABUL (Reuters) - The bodies of 13 U.S. troops have been recovered from the crash of a U.S. helicopter in eastern Afghanistan, but seven more U.S. soldiers are unaccounted for and some may have been captured, a news report said on Thursday.
A report on the BBC Web site quoted unidentified U.S. military officials on the recovery of the bodies from the site of Tuesday's crash in Kunar province.
The BBC said officials said there was hope some of those unaccounted for were alive but it also quoted correspondent Andrew North as saying they may have been captured by insurgents.
The report said some of those unaccounted for had been soldiers who had been fighting on the ground. It said North was at the U.S. military base at Asadabad, capital of Kunar.
General Aminullah Patyani, army commander for eastern Afghanistan, told Reuters "a few bodies" had been found at the crash site in the Dar-e-Paich area about 30 km (19 miles) northwest of Asadabad, but he did not know how many.
He said the search was still going on and he had no information about U.S. troops being captured by insurgents.
A U.S. official said in Washington on Wednesday that all 17 U.S. troops aboard the helicopter, who included elite U.S. Navy Seals, were presumed to have died in the crash.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. military, which has not confirmed any deaths, said she could not confirm the BBC report.
"I don't know where they are getting that information," Lieutenant Cindy Moore said. I don't have what they are saying."
The MH-47 Chinook helicopter, a Special Forces variant of the U.S. military's CH-47 twin-rotor workhorse, crashed after being hit by insurgent fire, the U.S. military said.
RECOVERY OPERATION
A statement from the military on Thursday said U.S. forces had secured the crash site and were "assessing the cause of the crash and the status of the 17 service members."
It said U.S.-led forces were continuing an anti-militant operation codenamed "Redwing" in Kunar, but gave no details.
U.S. spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry O'Hara said work at the crash site had been hampered by the presence of militants in the area, cloudy weather and rugged, heavily wooded terrain.
The Chinook, which crashed during an anti-al-Qaeda operation, was probably struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, General Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday.
Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the guerrillas shot down the Chinook with "a new type of weapon" which he did not describe.
Hakimi, whose information has often been unreliable in the past, said on Wednesday that the guerrillas had killed seven U.S. "spies" in the area before shooting down the helicopter.
In early June, the U.S. military said a helicopter had been attacked in Uruzgan province by a suspected surface-to-air missile. Such weapons, supplied by the United States, were used to great effect by guerrillas fighting Soviet occupiers in the 1980s but the Taliban have not been known to use them.
The U.S. military said the Chinook was hit as it approached a landing zone while bringing in reinforcements to assist troops on the ground and crashed 1-2 km (half a mile to one mile) away.
If confirmed, the casualties would be the heaviest for U.S. forces in an incident linked to hostile fire in Afghanistan since they invaded and overthrew the Taliban in 2001.
The stepped-up fighting and increased use of roadside bombs and suicide attacks have raised fears that insurgents are importing Iraq-style tactics to Afghanistan.
However, casualty levels among the 20,000-strong U.S.-led foreign force remain a fraction of those in Iraq.
Before Tuesday, the Pentagon reported 149 U.S. military deaths in and around Afghanistan since 2001, including 77 killed in action, compared with more than 1,700 deaths in Iraq since 2003. reuters db |
