US helicopter crashes in Afghanistan: US official

A US Black Hawk helicopter crashed in southwestern Afghanistan on Thursday with four people believed to be on board, likely American soldiers, a US defense official told AFP.

A senior police officer in Helmand province said the helicopter went down in stormy weather on a flight related to a deadly suicide attack on an Afghan police post in the province’s Garmser district.



He said police had received initial reports that all four members of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on board had been killed in the crash, but that this had not been confirmed.

The US official said poor weather had likely been a factor in the incident, but cautioned that nothing was being ruled out.


While helicopter crashes occur with some regularity in Afghanistan, ISAF says they are rarely the result of Taliban fire.

On March 16, 12 Turkish soldiers and two civilians were killed in a chopper crash in the Afghan capital Kabul.

In January, six US troops were killed in a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter crash in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province.

And 30 US troops and eight Afghans were killed in August 2011 when Taliban insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter, in the deadliest incident for US and NATO forces since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001.

The crash came a day after another difficult blow to the US-led war effort in Afghanistan — the publication of photos showing US troops abusing the mangled remains of Taliban insurgents.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday called for an “accelerated” transition of security responsibilities from NATO forces in the wake of the scandal, the latest in a series involving US troops.

Those incidents have damaged Afghan-US relations and fueled anti-Western sentiment in the war-wracked country.

NATO has a 130,000-strong military force fighting the Taliban, which has led an insurgency against the Western-backed Kabul government since being toppled from power by a 2001 US-led invasion.

Afghan forces are gradually taking over control of security in the country, with the goal of being in the lead nationwide next year and enabling most foreign troops to depart by the end of 2014.