Big blow to US in Afghanistan
2005-04-07 11:30
Kabul - The United States military said on Thursday that 13 of the 16 people confirmed dead in a helicopter crash in south-eastern Afghanistan were American service personnel, the worst American loss of life here since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Three others killed in Wednesday's crash were US government contractors, spokesperson Lieutenant Cindy Moore said. Their nationalities weren't released. Two more US soldiers were missing. The names of the victims were withheld pending notification of next of kin.
The CH-47 Chinook went down in bad weather near Ghazni city, 130km south-west of the capital, Kabul, as it returned to the main US base at Bagram from a mission in the insurgent-plagued south.
"Recovery work at the crash site will resume upon the arrival of a mortuary affairs team," Moore said. The team from Bagram was to arrive by noon, she said.
Moore said the transport helicopter was returning from a routine mission on Wednesday afternoon when controllers lost radio contact. A second Chinook made it safely back to the sprawling base north of Kabul.
Afghan officials said the helicopter plunged into a patch of flat desert five kilometres outside the city and burst into flames. The wreckage was strewn over open ground near a brick factory.
Abdul Rahman Sarjang, the chief of police of Ghazni, said his men and US troops were guarding the crash site on Thursday while other American soldiers collected parts of the helicopter.
He said more than a dozen bodies, some of them badly burned, had been taken to a small American base nearby. The thick cloud and strong winds which may have contributed to the crash were preventing US helicopters from flying the remains to Bagram, he said.
Sarjang said witnesses reported one of the helicopter's two rotors looked damaged before it hit the ground. He said he saw no sign of enemy fire, and militants had issued no claim of responsibility by Thursday morning.
According to US government statistics, at least 135 American soldiers have now died in and around Afghanistan since Operation Enduring Freedom, the US-led war on terrorism, began after the September 11 2001, attacks in America.
Accidents have proven almost as deadly as attacks from Taliban-led insurgents, including a string of helicopter crashes and explosions caused by mines and munitions left over from the country's long wars.
The previous worst incident in Afghanistan was an accidental explosion at an arms dump in Ghazni province that killed eight American soldiers in January 2004.
Last November, six Americans - three civilian crew members and three US soldiers - died when their plane crashed in the Hindu Kush mountains.
About 17 000 US soldiers are in Afghanistan battling a Taliban-led insurgency and training a new Afghan army.
- AP