US bomb Taliban 'hideout'

Warplanes pounded a suspected Taliban compound in the Afghan mountains near where an elite American military team was missing, while a transport plane flew home the bodies of 16 US troops killed when their special forces helicopter was shot down while trying to rescue the missing team, officials said.

Violence also erupted in other regions – with 38 rebels and Afghan security forces killed as insurgents stepped up their campaign to destabilise the country ahead of crucial elections in September.

It was not clear if there were any casualties in the airstrike last night in mountains near Asadabad town, Kunar province, close to the Pakistani border. US military spokesman Lt Col Jerry O’Hara said a “battle damage assessment is ongoing.”

“We conducted an airstrike on a target we deemed we had to hit immediately. The target was an enemy compound in Kunar province,” he said. “The bombing was done using precision guided munitions. The target objective was intelligence driven.”

O’Hara declined to say whether the airstrike was directly related to the missing military team, which was last heard from in the same area on Tuesday.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, claimed today that militants had captured one of the men and said he was a “high-ranking American” caught in the same area as where the helicopter went down.

“The soldier is being held in Kunar. Taliban leaders will decide what to do with him,” Hakimi said. “He is being kept in a home. His health is all right.”

When asked to provide evidence that the soldier was in captivity, he said, “Tomorrow we will give proof.”

Hakimi, who also claimed insurgents shot down the helicopter, often calls news organisations to take responsibility for attacks, and the information frequenty proves exaggerated or untrue. His exact tie to the Taliban leadership is unclear.

Reacting to the claim, O’Hara said there was no evidence indicating that any of the soldiers had been taken into captivity.

He said US forces were using all their resources to search for the missing men. The troops are a small team from the special operations forces, military officials said.

The downed Chinook helicopter had been trying to extract the soldiers when it went into the mountains.

“All our hopes are that we find our missing service members. On top of those hopes are actions on the ground looking for them,” O’Hara said. “It’s a very demanding area: Very mountainous, very wooded and the likelihood of enemy contact is probable.”

The bodies of 16 killed in the helicopter crash – eight Navy SEALs and eight other troops – were loaded in flag-draped caskets ont a C-17 transport plane during an “emotional ceremony” last night and flown to Dover, Delaware, O’Hara said.

The loss of the 16 was the deadliest single blowto American forces who ousted the Taliban in 2001 and are now fighting the escalating insurgency.

In three months of unprecedented fighting, about 502 suspected insurgents, 57 Afghan police and soldiers, 45 US casualties and 134 civilians have been killed. Only eight months ago, Afghan and US officials were hailing a relatively peaceful presidential election as a sign that the Taliban rebellion was finished.

In the latest fighting, 25 rebels and six Afghan soldiers were killed in a raid on a mountainous Taliban hideout in central Uruzgan province, Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan said.

The operation came after fighting in the region left 25 people dead earlier this week, including nine tribal elders whom Taliban rebels kidnapped and then killed, apparently in retaliation for the deaths of their own.

US and Afghan forces killed three rebels after coming under attack twice near the southern city of Kandahar, the US military said in a statement.

A roadside bomb exploded on the main road in Paktika province today as a convoy of about 20 vehicles, including cas from the United Nations,drove by, said UN spokesman Adrian Ewards.

The bomb exploded under a vehicle in the convoy that belonged to the provincial police chief. He was wounded, along with another officer, while four policemen travelling in the back of the vehicle were killed, Gov Gulab Shah Mungal said.