KABUL, 3 July 2005 — Warplanes pounded a suspected Taleban compound in the Afghan mountains near where an elite American military team was missing, while a transport plane flew home the bodies of 16 US troops killed when their special forces helicopter was shot down while trying to rescue the missing team, officials said.
Violence also erupted in other regions as insurgents stepped up their campaign to destabilize the country ahead of crucial elections in September.
It was not clear if there were any casualties in the airstrike at dusk on Friday in mountains near Asadabad town, Kunar province, close to the Pakistani border. US military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara said a “battle damage assessment is ongoing.”
“We conducted an airstrike on a target we deemed we had to hit immediately. The target was an enemy compound in Kunar province,” he said. “The bombing was done using precision guided munitions. The target objective was intelligence driven.”
O’Hara declined to say whether the airstrike was directly related to the missing military team, which was last heard from in the same area on Tuesday.
The US team has been missing since Tuesday, when insurgents shot down a helicopter bringing Special Forces troops to their aid, killing all 16 aboard.
The casualties were the heaviest in any combat incident for US forces in Afghanistan since they overthrew the Taleban in 2001. The remains of the troops killed — eight from airborne Special Forces units and eight Navy Seal commandos — were flown to the United States on Friday night.
A purported Taleban spokesman, Mulla Latif Hakimi, claimed Friday that militants had captured one of the men and said he was a “high-ranking American” caught in the same area as where the helicopter went down. He reiterated the claim yesterday in a phone call with The Associated Press.
A bomb attack on a convoy including UN and US vehicles killed at least four Afghan soldiers. The blast in the southeastern province of Paktika slightly wounded the provincial police chief and critically wounded his driver, as well as killing four soldiers, Paktika Gov. Gulab Mangal said.
Mangal said the 20-25 vehicle convoy included UN officials and US soldiers from Paktika’s Provincial Reconstruction Team, as well as officials of the province, police and army.
UN spokesman Adrian Edwards said reports from UN staff said that four police officers and two Afghan soldiers had been killed, but there were no UN or US casualties. Edwards said the UN staff had been on a mission to discuss security with tribal leaders.
Hundreds have died in militant-related violence since March, including 30 US soldiers, hundreds of guerrillas, and dozens of members of the Afghan security forces.
A US military statement said a US-Afghan patrol killed two more militants, wounded one and captured two yesterday after coming under attack in troubled Kandahar province. It said another militant was killed in a clash there on Thursday.
