Team of US soldiers missing in Afghanistan

A SMALL team of American soldiers was missing last night in the same mountains in eastern Afghanistan where a special forces helicopter was shot down earlier this week.

US forces said they are using "every available asset" to find them.

The MH-47 Chinook helicopter with 16 people on board who all died in the crash had gone into the mountains on Tuesday to extract the soldiers who are now missing. The team on the ground has been unaccounted for since the chopper was downed, US military spokesperson Lt Col Jerry O'Hara said.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, meanwhile, claimed the rebels had captured a US soldier in the area, near the town of Asadabad, close to the Pakistani border.

"One high-ranking American has been captured in fighting in the same area as the helicopter went down," he told Associated Press.

Reacting to the claim, Mr O'Hara said, "We have no proof or evidence indicating anything other than the soldiers are missing."

Hakimi, who also claimed that the insurgents shot down the helicopter, often calls news organisations to take responsibility for attacks, often with information that proves exaggerated or untrue.

Mr O'Hara said US forces were using "every available asset" to search for the missing troops. "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 loss of the 16 troops on the chopper was the deadliest single blow to American forces who ousted the Taliban in 2001 for harbouring al-Qaida and are now fighting an escalating insurgency. The bodies of the 16 have been recovered and troops Friday were trying to identify the remains, the military said.

Rescuers struggling against stormy weather, insurgents and the rugged terrain reached the crash site Thursday, about 36 hours after the chopper went down in high mountains near the town of Asadabad.

The rescue team was still there yesterday, recovering parts of the chopper.

At the Pentagon, Lt Gen James Conway, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it appears an unguided rocket-propelled grenade hit the chopper. He called it "a pretty lucky shot against a helicopter".