Sunday, December 22, 2002
The soldier's death was the 26th casualty suffered by the United States during its efforts in Afghanistan.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
KABUL, Afghanistan -- New harm struck foreign military forces here Saturday as seven German peacekeepers were killed in the apparent crash-landing of their helicopter only hours after the first combat death of a U.S. soldier since May.
The crash capped what was probably the most violent week in Afghanistan since Sept. 5, when a car bomb killed at least 25 people in Kabul and President Hamid Karzai narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the southern city of Kandahar.
Security has been tight and tensions have increased with the approach of today's one-year anniversary of Karzai's appointment as interim president.
The helicopter accident, thought to have been caused by a mechanical failure, also claimed the lives of two youths on the ground at the crash site, a largely industrial area near the airport, according to Kabul Police Chief Abdul Basir.
Col. Andreas Steffan, a spokesman for the German contingent of the International Security Assistance Force, said the chopper was on a routine mission when it went down just before 4 p.m. The Germans are part of a 22-nation, 4,700-soldier peacekeeping force charged with policing Kabul.
German technical experts were scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan today to try to determine the cause of the crash. Witnesses saw a fire on board the chopper shortly before but heard no explosion to indicate a rocket attack, Steffan said.
Soldier killed
Meanwhile, the U.S. soldier shot, Sgt. Steven Checo, 22, died during surgery at a field hospital, according to an Army statement from Fort Bragg, N.C. Checo, who was with the 82rd Airborne Division, had been assigned to Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The Pentagon said in a statement on its Web site that Checo was from New York City.
He died in a firefight near the village of Shkin in the unsettled southeastern province of Paktika, where Al-Qaida and Taliban remnants continue to harass U.S. military units from hide-outs across the border in Pakistan.
The skirmish took place after an armored convoy of U.S. soldiers approached seven to nine suspicious individuals about three miles from the U.S. base at Shkin, Army spokesman Maj. Stephen Clutter said.
Although the U.S. platoon quickly received air support from A-10 aircraft, no enemy soldiers were captured or killed.
The fatality was the 26th suffered in action by U.S forces in Afghanistan since the war on terrorism was mounted in the aftermath of last year's Sept. 11 attacks. An additional 28 soldiers have died in nonhostile occurrences, including plane crashes and other accidents.
Progress
Despite such incidents, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at nearby Bagram air base during a visit Saturday that the country is a better place to live than it was a year ago and that progress is being made in the fight against terrorism.
The Pakistani border, across which the attackers were believed to have fled Saturday, will be a "problem for some time to come because of the free movement of population back and forth," Myers said.
But he said he was satisfied with the Pakistani government's cooperation in efforts to secure the border, including the arrests of 400 terrorist suspects.
On Tuesday, two U.S. soldiers were injured seriously outside Kabul's main money changers' market when a grenade was thrown into their parked car.
Two suspects arrested in that attack are to be interrogated soon by U.S. forces, Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, Afghanistan theater commander, told reporters Saturday.
On Thursday, a terrorist killed himself and two Afghans in an attack on the main camp of the German ISAF contingent, about six miles east of Kabul.
The two episodes are thought to have been the first direct attacks on multinational forces in or near the capital since the fall a year ago of the fundamentalist Taliban regime, although the city has been the scene of numerous bombings and rocket attacks.
Associated Press contributed to this story.