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2 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Afghan Ambush
Two U.S. special forces soldiers were killed and another was wounded Saturday in an ambush in southern Afghanistan. The soldiers were on a reconnaissance patrol in Helmand province when they were attacked. Three Afghan soldiers were wounded, said an intelligence chief in southern Afghanistan. The soldiers were inspecting a school and hospital being built with American funding, said Dad Mohammed Khan, the intelligence chief of Helmand. "Two U.S. Special Forces were killed and one wounded when their four vehicle-mounted reconnaissance patrol was ambushed in the vicinity of Geresk," the U.S. military said in a statement from a U.S. military base north of the capital, Kabul. Four people on two motorcycles ambushed the U.S. vehicles and escaped, Khan said, identifying the assailants as fighters of the former Taliban regime.Two days earlier, unidentified gunmen shot to death a water engineer working for the International Committee of the Red Cross. Ricardo Munguia, 39, was killed when his car was intercepted on a dirt road while he was returning from Tarin Kot, in neighboring Uruzgan province, to Kandahar. Geresk is about 70 miles west of Kandahar. The deaths bring to 18 the number of combat casualties suffered by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The last death occurred Dec. 21, when Army Sgt. Steven Checo, 22, of New York, was killed in a gunfight during a nighttime operation in the eastern province of Paktika, near the Pakistani border. Posted by: Anonymous 2003-03-29 |
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