'Enemy Fire' Forced Down US Helicopters in Afghanistan

Agence France-Presse

Tuesday 06 December 2005

Hostile fire forced two US helicopters to make emergency landings in volatile southern Afghanistan, injuring five US soldiers and an Afghan, the US military said as three Afghan troops were wounded by a remote-controlled bomb.

Another improvised bomb exploded between a patrol of Dutch peacekeepers in the northern province of Baghland but none was hurt while a civilian mine clearer was killed removing an explosive at the military airport in Kabul, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said.

The bomb that wounded the three Afghan soldiers was detonated in volatile southern Zabul province as their patrol passed on the way to investigate a tip-off about a hideout of Taliban militants, provincial spokesman Gulab Shaha Alikhil said.

Meanwhile the US military said two of its Chinook heavy-lift choppers that were forced to make emergency landings in the insurgency-hit south on Sunday had both "received enemy fire".

The choppers were involved in US-led coalition operations against Taliban rebels and other Islamic militants.

The coalition was investigating what kind of weapons were used against the helicopters, Lieutenant Colonel Laurent Fox, a spokesman for the 20,000 strong coalition, told reporters Monday.

The first helicopter landed at a forward operating base in Uruzgan province, wounding an Afghan soldier, and the second in neighbouring Kandahar, slightly injuring five US soldiers, Fox said.

Both areas are hotbeds for attacks by militants loyal to the Taliban regime ousted in a US-led invasion in 2001. Purported Taliban spokesmen have recently claimed the hardliners have received new anti-aircraft missiles.

A man claiming to be a spokesman for the Taliban said in a telephone call to AFP Sunday that the militia had shot down the helicopter near Kandahar. His links to the fundamentalist group could not be independently verified.

Since being toppled in a US-led operations in November 2001 for sheltering Osama bin Laden, the Taliban have taken up an increasingly bloody insurgency against the new US-backed government and its allies.

A suicide bomber blew himself up near a US-led military convoy in volatile Kandahar on Sunday, killing a civilian and wounding a coalition soldier. The Canadian defence ministry confirmed a Canadian soldier was wounded lightly in a suicide attack in Kandahar Sunday.

It was the eighth suicide attack in Afghanistan in just over two months, several of them targeted at coalition troops and those with ISAF.

Also Sunday, three US troops were wounded when an improvised bomb exploded near their convoy in Zabul. They were in a stable condition, the coalition said.

Afghan and coalition forces had meanwhile since Friday broken up two cells that were assembling and planting such improvised bombs, and arrested five suspects, the coalition said in a statement.

Explosives and bomb-making materials were also confiscated, it said.

Violence linked to the insurgency has claimed about 1,500 lives this year, including several militants killed in clashes with security forces.

There has also been a string of military chopper crashes which have claimed nearly 60 lives this year, with some of the aircraft downed in attacks.

On June 28, a US Chinook was shot down by suspected Taliban fighters in the restive eastern province of Kunar, killing all 16 servicemen on board. Three US commandos whom it was trying to rescue were later shot dead by insurgents.

Link Here