GIs missing in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan – U.S. forces desperately scoured rugged Afghan mountains Friday for an elite American military team missing in the same area where a U.S. helicopter was shot down.
A purported Taliban spokesman claimed militants captured one of the men.
In central Afghanistan, Taliban rebels kidnapped and killed nine Afghan tribal leaders and sent a boy to offer to exchange the bodies for those of dead militants, an official said. The tribal leaders were among 25 people killed in three days of fighting in Uruzgan province – yet another troubling sign for a nation hit by an upswing in violence as September elections near.
The loss of the American military team in the remote eastern mountains worsened the already stinging blow suffered by the U.S. military after 16 troops were killed Tuesday aboard the MH-47 Chinook chopper.
It comes as the United States is scrambling to deal with an insurgency that threatens three years of progress toward peace.
U.S. forces were using “every available asset” to search for the missing men, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara said.
“Until we find our guys, they are still listed as unaccounted for and everything we got in that area is oriented on finding the missing men,” he said.
The missing troops are a small team from the special operations forces, said military officials on the condition of anonymity because rescue operations were still under way.
Though the team has been missing since Tuesday, the military had refrained from discussing their situation to prevent the Taliban from setting out in search of them.
The downed helicopter had been trying to “extract the soldiers” Tuesday when it went into the mountains near Asadabad, close to the Pakistani border, O’Hara said.
The Taliban claim to have kidnapped one of the men came from purported spokesman Mullah Latif Hakimi. “One high-ranking American has been captured in fighting in the same area as the helicopter went down,” he told the Associated Press. “I won’t give you any more details now.”