Second member of missing elite US military team found

A second member of a US special operations team missing since last week has been located in a house in remote eastern Afghanistan and is wounded, the provincial governor said today, a day after another US soldier was rescued in the same area.

Kunar Gov. Asadullah Wafa also said an American airstrike in the province last week had killed 17 civilians, including women and children. The US military confirmed some civilians died in the strike on what it called a known terrorist target, but said the numbers were not clear.

Wafa said Afghan police and soldiers were trying to rescue the second missing US service member, who was believed sheltering in a house in a remote part of Kunar, a mountainous province on the border with Pakistan.

“He is with an Afghan family and we have heard he is injured,” he said, citing intelligence sources.

Wafa said the first member of the elite US military team to be rescued had also taken shelter in the home of an Afghan village elder in the province, before American forces were notified of his location and picked him up.

US military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara declined to comment on the governor’s comments, except to say “we hold every hope for those who are still missing.”

He said American forces were still in the area searching for the remaining members of the small special operations unit that was reported missing last Tuesday in Kunar. A rescue effort the same day ended in tragedy when a transport helicopter seeking to extract the team was shot down, killing 16 troops aboard. It was the deadliest single blow yet to American forces who ousted the Taliban in 2001.

The bombing that killed the civilians was also in Kunar and occurred last Friday.

Wafa said it appeared to be a “mistake” by the Americans. The villagers had gone to look at the remains of a house in tiny Chechal village that had been destroyed in an airstrike moments earlier when a US warplane dropped a second bomb on the same target.

He said it wasn’t clear who was killed in the house in the initial attack.

“Maybe some militants were killed, but I don’t know,” Wafa said. “The 17 people were killed in the second bombing.”

The military said in a statement today that the attack was carried out “with precision-guided munitions that resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of enemy terrorists and noncombatants.”

“The targeted compound was a known operating base for terrorist attacks in Kunar province as well as a base for a medium-level terrorist leader,” it said. “Battle damage assessment is currently ongoing.”

The statement added that US forces “regret the loss of innocent lives and follow stringent rules of engagement specifically to ensure that noncombatants are safeguarded. However, when enemy forces move their families into the locations where they conduct terrorist operations, they put these innocent civilians at risk.”

The US service member who was rescued from Kunar province was being evaluated Monday, officials said. They have declined to say when the rescue occurred or provide other details, including a reaction to reports that the team consisted of several Navy Seals.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, claimed last week that militants had captured one member of the team and said he was a “high-ranking American” caught in the same area as where the helicopter went down, but refused to elaborate.

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

US officials said there was no evidence indicating that any of the soldiers had been taken into captivity.

In a separate development, a joint United Nations-Afghan government electoral commission condemned the killing of a senior pro-government cleric, Mohammed Nabi Misbah, in the southern city of Kandahar on Sunday.

Misbah had been working for the commission in the city ahead of the landmark legislative elections in September, said Bronwyn Curran, a spokeswoman for the organisation. Police have blamed the Taliban for the attack.

The killing comes after an unprecedented spate of rebel attacks across Afghanistan that have left about 700 people dead and threatened three years of progress toward peace since the ouster of the Taliban.