KABUL, 6 July 2005 — Two US Special Forces soldiers missing for several days in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan were found dead, but one member of the team remained unaccounted for, the US military said yesterday. A helicopter sent to reinforce the four-strong team was shot down a week ago by what the military believed to be a rocket propelled grenade, killing all 16 navy SEAL commandos and army specialists aboard.
The third member of the original missing party was rescued over the weekend by US forces. Their mission to find the missing soldiers had been hampered by torrential rains and the mountainous terrain, as well as the presence of insurgents in Kunar, a stronghold of the Taleban and the Hizb-e-Islami group.
The fate of the final soldier is highly sensitive since the ousted Taleban militia said at the weekend that they had captured an American servicemen. They have not produced any evidence to support the claim. The downing of the US helicopter was the first by hostile fire in Afghanistan and the toll from the crash the biggest for US forces from a single attack since the hard-line Islamic Taleban regime was toppled by US and other forces in late 2001.
Earlier yesterday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was “saddened and distressed” by the deaths of up to 17 people in a US airstrike. The Afghan government urged the American-led coalition to change its tactics following Friday’s bombing in Chichal village in the eastern province of Kunar, which came amid the mission to rescue the four special forces soldiers.
“The president is extremely saddened and distressed to hear the report that recent military operations in Kunar by the coalition forces resulted in the death of civilians,” presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin told reporters. Ludin said the Afghan government had launched its own investigation into the bombing, which the provincial governor said killed 17 people including women and children. The US military has expressed regret but has not specified the number of civilian casualties. It said American forces struck a “terrorist compound”, leading to the deaths of an unknown number of “enemy terrorists” and noncombatants.
