KABUL, Afghanistan – The mountaintop landing zone where a U.S. helicopter crashed near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan is a day’s walk from the nearest passable road.
The area’s only residents are al-Qaida and Taliban militants holed up in makeshift bases where U.S. and Afghan forces are now hunting them down.
“That area is a place where nobody is living, but I can confirm that it is a dangerous area. The enemy lives there,” said Gen. Abdul Ghafar, the police chief of Kunar province where the helicopter went down Friday afternoon.
Ten U.S. soldiers on a combat operation to flush out Taliban insurgents died, military officials said Saturday.
The CH-47 Chinook was conducting operations on a mountaintop landing zone when the crash occurred. Other aircraft and crews were also at the landing zone and said hostile forces did not cause the crash, the U.S. military said.
“There is no indication that the helicopter came down due to some enemy action,” said Lt. Tamara D. Lawrence, a coalition spokeswoman.
The crash site was near the town of Asadabad, the provincial capital of Kunar about 10 miles northwest of a U.S. base and about 150 miles east of the capital Kabul.
Some 2,500 Afghan and U.S. soldiers are conducting a joint military operation in Kunar province, near the border with Pakistan. It’s one of the biggest offensives since the ouster of the hardline Taliban regime by U.S.-led forces in late 2001 for hosting al-Qaida.
Asadabad – where the U.S. military has a large base – is in a large valley surrounded by rugged mountains.
“The area of the crash is a mountainous area, and it is difficult to reach,” Ghafar said.
Recovery operations did not begin until daybreak Saturday. The military did not say what unit the U.S. troops were from, only specifying that they were soldiers.
The crash was the deadliest for U.S. forces here in a year and comes at a time of increasing militant attacks in Afghanistan’s southern and eastern provinces, where militants have been using suicide and roadside bombs more than ever.
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