U.S. soldiers die in Afghanistan

By Robert Burns

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Seven American soldiers were killed and 11 were wounded Monday when two U.S. helicopters took enemy fire during the most deadly allied air and ground offensive of the war in Afghanistan.

U.S. warplanes pounded al-Qaida and Taliban mountain strongholds in eastern Afghanistan while hundreds of coalition ground troops scoured the rugged, snow-covered terrain for pockets of enemy fighters. The heavily armed defenders responded with bursts of mortars, grenades and machine gun fire.

In all, 40 U.S. soldiers have been wounded since the operation began Friday; half had returned to battle, the Pentagon said.

The U.S. assault, code-named Operation Anaconda, marked a new approach. Instead of relying on Afghan forces to take the fight to the al-Qaida, with U.S. troops in support, the Americans took the lead. Afghan, Canadian, Australian, German, Danish, Norwegian and French forces were supporting.

U.S. ground troops and pilots were operating at elevations between 8,000 and 11,000 feet, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, where it’s cold, icy and snowy "like the Rocky Mountains in the middle of the winter."

Army officials said Apache attack helicopters had been hit with extraordinary amounts of small arms fire but were able to continue their assaults. Air Force AC-130 gunships, armed with howitzers and 40mm cannons, were serving as the ground troops’ airborne artillery.

Air Force bombers and Navy and Air Force strike aircraft had dropped more than 350 bombs by Monday.

The men killed Monday were not the first U.S. casualties in the new offensive, which appeared far from finished. Army Chief Warrant Officer Stanley Harriman, 34, of Wade, N.C., was killed in a ground attack Saturday shortly after American forces, joined by Afghan and other allied troops, began the offensive against hundreds of fighters of the al-Qaida terror network and the former ruling Taliban militia dug in near the town of Gardez.

Details on the two helicopter incidents were sketchy, but officials said the second helicopter was on a rescue mission.

A Central Command spokesman, Marine Maj. Ralph Mills, said an MH-47 Chinook helicopter was flying low on a reconnaissance mission when it was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade that knocked a soldier out of the aircraft and caused a hydraulic problem.

The first helicopter landed about a half-mile away, Mills said.

A second MH-47 Chinook helicopter was flying in tandem with the first and rescued the downed crew, then returned to the area where the soldier fell out. The second helicopter dropped troops in that area, and six were killed in a firefight, Mills said.

The second helicopter returned and picked up the dead and wounded, he said. He said the wounded were being treated in a hospital in Afghanistan.

Several officials said the details of the battle may change as more information becomes available.

"The fog of war will persist" until more of the soldiers involved are brought back and debriefed, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the Central Command, told a news conference in Tampa, Fla., where he is based.

Franks said he watched the subsequent rescue operation unfold from his Tampa headquarters by video link.

Names of the Americans killed Monday were being withheld until relatives could be notified.

The operation is being led by Maj. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck, commanding general of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division.

Franks said the U.S.-led offensive was planned for several weeks and had as its objective a 60-square-mile area south of Gardez. He said about 1,000 Afghan troops were serving as a blocking force on the perimeter of the area to hem in the enemy and prevent large numbers from escaping.

Wave after wave of B-52s and other aircraft unleashed bombs for a fourth day to try to soften enemy positions in the snowcapped peaks.

"In one minute, I counted 15 bombs," Rehmahe Shah, a security guard at the intelligence unit in the provincial capital Gardez, said Monday.

Neither the former Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar nor al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden was believed to be in the area.