Eight US soldiers involved in efforts to defeat extremist Taliban militants in Afghanistan were killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday as authorities reported the killings of seven Afghans in new unrest.
The NATO-led force said meanwhile British forces attacked and cleared a "major Taliban extremist headquarters" in the southern province of Helmand in an overnight operation. It did not say how many rebels were killed.
The Chinook transport chopper came down in darkness in the southeastern province of Zabul, about 250km southwest of Kabul, not far from a main highway, residents and officials said.
"Eight coalition personnel were killed and 14 others were wounded early Sunday when a coalition CH-47 helicopter had a sudden, unexplained loss of power and control and crashed in eastern Afghanistan," a coalition statement said.
The coalition said an investigation would verify the cause of the crash. It had said earlier the chopper came down after reporting engine failure.
The force is made up of 11,000 mostly US troops who are in Afghanistan to help the government round up Taliban insurgents and their allies, including al-Qaeda militants, and to train the fledgling Afghan security forces.
It led the offensive that toppled the 1996-2001 government of the extremist Taliban which regrouped months later to launch an insurgency that was its deadliest last year with more than 4,000 people killed, most of them rebels.
Authorities meanwhile reported the killing of seven Afghans in new unrest.
In the eastern province of Paktia about 25 gunmen who had taken refuge in a village late Saturday dragged five worshippers from a mosque and shot them, killing two, provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang said.
The mob moved on to another police post, attacking and wounding a policeman who later died, he told reportersd, labeling the fighters "opponents of the government," which Afghan officials use to mean Taliban insurgents.
In the western province of Farah, a remotely detonated bomb struck a police vehicle returning from an operation to eradicate illegal opium crops.
Two policemen were killed and three wounded, provincial governor Mohaidin Khan said, blaming the Taliban. Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world's opium and is cracking down on the drugs trade which is said to fund insurgents.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force announced meanwhile that soldiers patrolling near the main city in the south, Kandahar, on Saturday shot and killed a man they suspected of being a suicide bomber and who had failed to heed warnings to halt.
It was the second such killing near the city the same day with ISAF announcing the first on Saturday. There were nearly 140 suicide attacks in Afghanistan last year, most of them in the insurgency-hit south and aimed at troops.
The British-led operation in Helmand overnight destroyed three major compounds and a tunnel complex that linked them, an ISAF statement said without estimating Taliban casualties.
Helmand has seen some of the worst fighting this year, with regular clashes in various districts.
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