Enemy fire kills Tacoma soldier

Herald news services

FORT LEWIS — An Army special forces soldier killed Friday in eastern Afghanistan had spent most of his 12 1/2-year military career in Washington state, a special forces officer said.

He was the first U.S. service member slain by enemy action in three months of warfare, Pentagon officials said.

The Green Beret was identified as Sgt. First Class Nathan Ross Chapman, 31, the Pentagon said. He was ambushed after a meeting with allied Afghan fighters near Khowst, where al-Qaida fighters have congregated, officials said.

Shortly after leaving the meeting, the Americans were hit by small-arms fire, including light machine gun and rifle fire, a senior defense official said. "It was fast, and it was intense," the official said.

Chapman had served most of his career at Fort Lewis. But since the war on terrorism, he had been assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, Ky., said a spokesman for Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C.

The spokesman said one of Chapman’s jobs "was to make sure that communication links are active and operational." But as a Green Beret, he said, "he is adept at anything else."

The married father of two "was a proud father, loving husband, and devoted to serving his country," his parents said in the statement Friday from their home in Georgetown, Texas, about 25 miles north of Austin. "He loved the Army and referred to his unit as his second family."

Chapman was originally from San Antonio, Texas. A member of the Fort Lewis 1st Special Forces Group, he was the second American to lose his life in enemy action in the war.

Johnny "Mike" Spann, a CIA officer, died Nov. 25 when Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners at a jail in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif rioted.

Three U.S. soldiers also were killed Dec. 5 when a U.S. bomb missed its target. Since the war began Oct. 7, five other members of the military have died in three accidents and an unexplained shooting.

A CIA officer who was part of Chapman’s intelligence-gathering mission near Khowst was seriously wounded in the fighting, although his injuries weren’t considered life-threatening, officials said. Both were removed from the area by a U.S. military rescue team, officials said.

The Green Berets, in some cases working with CIA officers, have been combing the region on intelligence-gathering missions with Afghan fighters. They have been searching caves and bunkers, gathering weapons and interrogating captured Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

The incident was a reminder that the Pentagon’s precision-bombing techniques and other advanced technology have enabled it to wage massive military campaigns with remarkably few casualties. That the United States has been able to accomplish so much in Afghanistan with only one soldier killed by hostile fire "is a very powerful sign of American military strength," retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said on CNN.

As the search for Taliban and al-Qaida leaders continued Friday, the commander believed to have been hiding the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, reportedly surrendered to anti-Taliban forces.

Abdul Wahed Bagrani, who is believed to have sheltered Omar in a remote mountainous area near Baghran, in south-central Afghanistan, is helping the search for his former leader, according to the transitional Afghan government.

The main focus of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan is now the area around Khowst, only a few miles from the border with Pakistan.

U.S. warplanes attacked a reported al-Qaida compound near there Friday for the second consecutive day. U.S. officials said the area was struck again because of intelligence suggesting that al-Qaida fighters were gathering there, possibly for a move across the border.

The compound, which included caves and some buildings used for training, is in an area that was struck by U.S. cruise missiles in 1998 in retaliation for the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other defense officials have warned almost daily that the risks to U.S. forces remain high. U.S. troops on the ground face great danger in their cave searches as well as from ambushes, terrorist-style bombings of their temporary installations, land mines and booby-traps, officials say.