KABUL, 30 June 2005 — All 17 US troops aboard an American helicopter that crashed after being hit by ground fire in an anti-militant operation in Afghanistan are believed to have died, a US official said yesterday. The casualties from Tuesday’s crash would be the heaviest for US forces in an incident linked to hostile fire in Afghanistan since they invaded to overthrow the Taleban in 2001.

“We presume that all were lost,” said a US official in Washington, who asked not to be identified, when asked if all those aboard — including elite US Seals Special Operations troops — had been killed in the crash. The official told Reuters the twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook was believed to have been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in mountainous terrain near the border with Pakistan, an attack claimed by Taleban guerrillas.

The US military said the Chinook crashed in remote and mountainous Kunar province on Tuesday afternoon while bringing troops to reinforce soldiers in an anti-Al-Qaeda operation. It was hit by ground fire as it approached its landing zone and crashed about 1-2 km away, US military spokesman Col. Jim Yonts told a news briefing in Kabul. He said fighting continued in the area yesterday involving a large force of US-led troops and a “very determined enemy”.

Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the guerrillas shot down the aircraft in the village of Shorak using “a new type of weapon” he did not describe. “This is a huge success for the Taleban,” he said, adding that the guerrillas had video of the crash and would post photographs on their Web site (www.alemarah.com). It did not appear to have been updated yesterday.

The rugged landscape deep in the scenic Hindu Kush mountain range was also hampering the effort to find the missing personnel, another US spokesman, Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara, told AFP. “The terrain is a challenge and every challenge we work around,” he said.

The crash, which would also be the deadliest single attack on US forces in Afghanistan if hostile fire is confirmed as the cause, comes amid fears that the war-shattered country is degenerating into Iraq-style chaos.

More than 500 people, most of them militants, have died since the Taleban launched a major offensive at the beginning of the year ahead of key elections in September. A Taleban spokesman said the troop-transporting Chinook flew in after rebels seized and executed seven Afghans “working as spies for the Americans with satellite phones and maps”.