[Dawn] A Taliban capo who was the target of an operation last month in which 30 US troops died in a helicopter crash has been killed in an air strike, the NATO...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
-led force in Afghanistan said Thursday.
Qari Tahir was killed in an air strike Tuesday in Wardak province, central Afghanistan, six weeks after the helicopter crash caused the biggest single loss of life for foreign forces in ten years of war.
Washington has said it had killed those behind the helicopter's downing, but a senior Afghan government official told AFP that it was Tahir who had lured US forces to the scene by tipping them off about a Taliban meeting.
"Tahir... was the target of a previous combined operation on Aug. 5, 2011, that resulted in the loss of the CH-47 Chinook last month," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.
"He led a group of myrmidon fighters throughout the valley and was known to use roadside kabooms and rockets to intimidate the local populace."
The US helicopter was shot down killing 38 people including 30 US troops, 25 of whom were special forces.
Many of the victims belonged to the US Navy's "Team Six", the special forces unit that killed the late Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden is dead.
He took two shots to the head.
That made him frown
and he had to lie down.
Osama bin Laden is dead.
in a raid on his Pak hideout in May. Sources said they were not part of the team that killed the 9/11 criminal mastermind.
Days after the crash, General John Allen, the US commander of foreign troops in Afghanistan, said that those who shot the Chinook down had been hunted down and killed in a bombing raid by an F-16 fighter jet.
This claim was denied by the Taliban and a senior Afghan government official told AFP that it was Tahir who was responsible for luring US forces to the scene.
Speaking anonymously, he said Tahir had set a trap for the aircraft to be shot down.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993....
responded to the crash, which raised doubts over the international mission in Afghanistan, by vowing to "stay the course".
The fatal operation had been targeting the leadership of an "enemy network" within the remote and hostile Tangi Valley, southwest of the capital Kabul, Allen said.
The Afghan police and army have struggled to counter the Taliban in the Tangi valley, according to officials and local people, with gunnies controlling the area.
There are around 140,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, about 100,000 of them from the US, fighting a Taliban-led insurgency.
All foreign combat forces are due to leave in staged withdrawals leading up to a deadline at the end of 2014, at which point Afghan cops will assume responsibility for their country.
A string of recent spectacular attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul in recent months has highlighted the strength of the insurgency.
They include Tuesday's liquidation of Burhanuddin Rabbani
... the late legitimate president of Afghanistan...
, a former president tasked with leading Afghan government efforts to talk peace with the Taliban, who was killed by a man with explosives hidden in his turban.