WASHINGTON (Islamweb & News Agencies) - A U.S. helicopter on a special forces mission in Afghanistan crashed in bad weather on Friday, injuring four crewmembers, but all were rescued and evacuated from the country, the Pentagon said.The Pentagon said F-14 Tomcats from the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt destroyed the damaged helicopter. This is standard U.S. military procedure in cases where high-tech items are lost in hostile areas and might be used by an enemy.
Another helicopter rescued the crewmembers from the downed craft.
The bombardment of Taleban positions by American warplanes has meanwhile continued. The heavy bombers struck at least twice at the strategic Tutakhan hills, where entrenched Taleban fighters have made the opposition-held Bagram airport unusable (Read photo caption below)
Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have in recent days said the approach of winter weather in Afghanistan was hampering efforts to get more U.S. special forces troops into the country.
Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told reporters earlier on Friday that freezing rain was making helicopter flight difficult.
Weather is not the only difficulty, however. Defense officials said on Thursday that one U.S. special forces team had to abort a mission when their aircraft encountered ground fire.
There are now fewer than 100 U.S. troops in Afghanistan spotting targets for air strikes on forces of the ruling Taliban around the northern crossroads city Mazar-i-Sharif and the capital Kabul. The U.S. troops are also working with opposition Northern Alliance forces trying to capture the cities
Rumsfeld, who is now on a tour of Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India, said earlier this week that he hoped to have three to four times the number of special forces teams in Afghanistan ``as soon as humanly possible.''
PHOTO CAPTION:
A US Air Force B-52 flies over Afghanistan after it dropped bombs on front line Taliban positions in Moshin-Ab, north of the Afghan capital Kabul November 2, 2001. B-52s carpet-bombed ahead of a promised offensive by the Taliban's civil war foes. (Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)