U.S. Continues to Search for Soldiers

KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. helicopters and hundreds of troops were searching Friday for soldiers who had gone missing in Afghanistan this week just before a helicopter coming to their aid was shot down. Meanwhile, the Taliban claimed to be holding one American.

But U.S. forces who have been looking for members of the reconnaissance team have no reason to believe any of them have been killed or captured, U.S. spokesmen said. The helicopter crashed Tuesday in mountainous Kunar province, which borders Pakistan.

Col. Jim Yonts said he could neither confirm nor deny a claim by Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi that insurgents had killed seven U.S. “spies” before the Chinook helicopter was shot down. Hakimi’s information has often proved unreliable.

All 16 Special Forces soldiers aboard the craft were killed, the U.S. military said.

Officials initially said 17 soldiers had been aboard, but they revised the figure to 16 -- eight from airborne Special Forces troops and eight Navy SEALs.

Yonts said that the Chinook was sent in after the reconnaissance team requested support but that the team was not at the site when the aircraft arrived and was attacked. He could not say how many were in the unit or whether they were also Special Forces.

Also Friday, Hakimi said guerrillas in Kunar had captured an American soldier Wednesday who had been aboard the helicopter when it crashed.

Reacting to Hakimi’s claim, another U.S. spokesman, Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara, said there was no evidence that soldiers had been killed, captured or hurt, or were in hiding.

“The only thing we do know is they are missing,” he said.

He declined to comment on a BBC report that quoted military officials at the main U.S. base in Kunar as saying they had had “several indications” the troops were still alive.

The BBC said a number of Afghan guides working with the U.S. military were also missing.

Yonts said a large anti-insurgent operation was underway in Kunar to try to find the missing team and complete recovery and investigation work at the crash site.

ABC News said as many as 1,000 troops were taking part.

Insurgents have stepped up their activity to try to derail Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, the next big step in Afghanistan’s difficult path to stability.

Elsewhere in the country, the threat to the elections was underscored by a series of Taliban attacks in which nine village elders, four policemen and two other civilians died along with 13 guerrillas, officials said.

In the deadliest attack, the rebels kidnapped and killed the nine elders in the central province of Oruzgan on Thursday night, a day after security forces killed seven guerrillas in an attack on a security post there, Oruzgan Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan said.

He said the guerrillas had released a 9-year-old boy to bring news of the killings and to offer to exchange the bodies of the elders for those of the guerrillas. The authorities did not respond to the offer.

In another insurgent attack Thursday, two civilians were killed when rockets aimed at a district office landed northeast of the city of Khowst, in the southeast, police said.