A US helicopter which crashed in Afghanistan with 17 service members on board was likely shot down, the military said yesterday, in what is believed to be the first such incident since the fall of the Taliban.
American officials said they did not know the fate of those on board the Chinook, which came down during an anti-al-Qaeda mission in the mountainous, insurgency-plagued eastern province of Kunar on Tuesday.
The fundamentalist Islamic Taliban militia, ousted by a US-led invasion in late 2001, claimed responsibility for shooting down the giant troop transporting helicopter.
PHOTO: EPA
"Seventeen service members were on board the CH-47 helicopter that crashed in mountainous terrain west of Asadabad on June 28," a US military statement said.
"Initial reports indicate the crash may have been caused by hostile fire. The status of the service members is unknown at this time," the statement said.
US warplanes were circling the wreckage and American-led and Afghan troops guarded the site against further militant attacks while rescuers searched for possible survivors, the military said.
"The helicopter was transporting forces into the area as part of Operation Red Wing, which is part of the enduring fight to defeat al-Qaeda militants and deny them influence in Kunar province," the US military added.
"Operation Red Wing continues in Kunar," the US military said.
A Taliban spokesman said the helicopter was in the area after rebels seized seven Afghans "working as spies for the Americans with satellite phones and maps" and trying to track down militants.
"Taliban recognized the seven spies, arrested them, tried and executed them," Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Latif Hakimi told reporters by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.
"Among the seven, one of them managed to get the message out to the Americans, who came with helicopters," Hakimi said.
He said Taliban rebels shot down the Chinook near a village called Shurak and that all passengers on board were killed.
There was no way of independently confirming his account.
Kunar, sitting at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountain range, has been a traditional stronghold of Taliban and other Islamic militants.
The provincial governor Asadullah Wafa was quoted as saying by the Afghan Islamic Press, based in Pakistan, that a rocket was fired at the US helicopter in the Wattapur region of the province.
"But we do not know what happened to the helicopter," he reportedly said.
A Chinook carrying 18 people, three of them civilians, went down in an accident in bad weather April killing all on board. It was the worst air crash suffered by US forces in Afghanistan.
US forces flying missions above Afghanistan's difficult, rugged terrain have suffered nine helicopter crashes since the end of 2001, including Tuesday's, but this is the first attributed to enemy fire.
Seven previous crashes before the April accident had claimed 21 lives.
The US-led coalition launched the operation to oust the Taliban when they refused to hand over al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.
In recent weeks, the 18,000-strong US coalition force has been stepping up pressure on militants in southern and southeastern Afghanistan to chase them out of their strongholds in the run-up to September parliamentary elections.
Four policemen including a district police chief were killed when suspected Taliban detonated a landmine on Tuesday a few kilometers from the site of the chopper crash.
It was unclear if the two incidents were linked.
Separately in southcentral Uruzgan province a one-hour gunfight erupted when Taliban militants attacked a government checkpoint, killing a civilian, injuring three policemen and losing one of their own fighters, officials said.
In one of the bloodiest offensives in the last three years, scores of militants were killed last week in southern Afghanistan, most of them when US aircraft pounded militant positions in an 11-hour bombardment.
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