Five Americans, a Briton and a Canadian died when a Chinook helicopter was apparently shot down in Afghanistan's most volatile province, officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force said other troops rushing to the scene were ambushed and had to call in air support to drive off their attackers.
Initial reports suggested the helicopter was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade on Wednesday evening, said the US official, who insisted on speaking anonymously because the crash was still under investigation. NATO said there were no survivors.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, claimed in a telephone call that militants shot the helicopter down in southern Helmand Province, the world's largest opium poppy-growing region, where combat has been heavy in recent months.
Ahmadi did not offer any proof for his claim, but he specified the helicopter crashed in the Kajaki district hours before NATO reported that information. Kajaki is the site of a hydroelectric dam and the scene of recent fighting.
NATO said the CH-47 Chinook was carrying a crew of five and two military passengers when it crashed. The cause was "being determined by military officials," it said.
According to a US military official, the British and Canadian soldiers were passengers on the helicopter. The official requested anonymity because the dead soldiers' home countries had not yet publicly released their identities.
NATO said troops going to the crash site were ambushed by enemy fighters and the unit called in an airstrike "to eliminate the enemy threat."
It did not say if the troops were from the US-led coalition, NATO's force or the Afghan army. One civilian was injured by gunfire.
The CH-47 Chinook, a heavy transport helicopter with two rotors, can carry around 40 soldiers plus a small crew. The fact it was flying at night suggested the aircraft might have been carrying troops on a nighttime air assault.
Kajaki is the site of a large US-funded hydroelectric dam now being repaired so it can provide electricity to the southern city of Kandahar. British troops, who make up the bulk of the forces in Helmand Province, have been engaged in fierce fighting around the dam protecting it.
Meanwhile, a Taliban ambush of a police convoy in the south yesterday left 16 policemen dead, the interior ministry said, in one of the deadliest attacks against the fledgling police service.
The three-vehicle police convoy was on its way from the troubled province of Zabul to the capital when it was ambushed, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
"Sixteen police were martyred and another six police were wounded today at 8:30am in an ambush by the enemies of peace in Afghanistan," he said.
There were also casualties on the Taliban side, Bashary said, without giving a number.
Taliban militants fled the area after army reinforcements arrived, a press statement said.
The militants regularly attack Afghan policemen with roadside bombings and ambushes.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS