G.I.'s Recover Bodies of 2 on Seal Team in Afghanistan
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/international/asia/05afghan.html?th&emc=th  (must register to view original article)

By CARLOTTA GALL and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: July 5, 2005


KABUL, Afghanistan, July 4 - American forces have recovered the bodies of two members of a four-man Navy Seal reconnaissance team that was reported missing last week after coming under hostile fire in a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan, a senior Defense Department official said Monday.

The defense official, as well as other Pentagon and military officials in Afghanistan and Washington, declined to provide details of where and how the two bodies had been found, and declined to identify the men publicly until family members have been notified.

News of the deaths, which were first reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation, came as there were conflicting reports about the location of one of the other members of the Special Operations team. The governor of Kunar Province, where the team was when it was reported missing, said Monday that a Seal commando was reported to be alive and in the hands of Afghan villagers.

But American officials in Washington said the governor's remarks, which gave rise to hopes that a second member of the team had been found alive, actually referred to the one team member who was rescued Saturday and flown to safety on Sunday, still leaving one member unaccounted for. "What we have here is a time lag in the reporting," a senior defense official said.

The governor, Asadullah Wafa, cautioned that he was still trying to verify the report but indicated that he believed it was separate from the report of the first Seal commando who was rescued. According to the new report, he said that the sailor was being cared for by villagers, and that Afghan soldiers and policemen were trying to reach the remote village to rescue him. "There is a report; we don't know if it is true yet," he said.

The four-man team had been out of contact in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan since heavy fighting on Tuesday. A MH-47 Chinook helicopter sent in that day to extract them after the team radioed for help crashed, apparently after it was struck by hostile fire, killing all 16 Navy and Army personnel on board.

The crash was the single largest combat loss for the American forces since the war in Afghanistan started in late 2001, and this is the first time that American officials acknowledged that a unit had disappeared in the country.

Yet in a blow to the local community, as many as 17 people, women and children among them, were reported killed in a American airstrike on a compound in continuing fighting in Kunar Province on Friday. The United States military conceded in a statement that civilians had been killed in the airstrike and said that it deeply regretted the loss of innocent lives, but that it had been aiming at a known militant base.

"U.S. forces conducted an air strike against a terrorist compound in Kunar Province with precision-guided munitions that resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of enemy terrorists and noncombatants," the statement said. "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."

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

The American military command in Kabul issued a statement on Monday confirming that one of the Seal team members had been located, was in stable condition, and had been taken to Bagram Air Base for medical treatment. But the statement gave no details about the fate of the three other team members.

Two defense officials in Washington said the sailor was well enough to debrief military officials there on how the original mission of the Seal reconnaissance team - to scout out suspected pockets of Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters - had gone awry.

The officials in Washington all spoke on the condition of anonymity, given the nature of the search-and-rescue operation by hundreds of American forces in one of the most forbidding areas of the country.

Mr. Wafa, the Kunar governor, said that the Seal commando who was found Saturday had also been taken in by local villagers. He said he was not surprised that villagers had sheltered and returned the Americans, because, he said, most Afghans were happy with the American presence in Afghanistan. "Just a few enemies are against them," he said.

Carlotta Gall reported from Kabul for this article and Eric Schmitt from Washington.