Taliban says it killed 'captured' U.S. commando
Sat Jul 9, 2005 4:03 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban guerrillas said on Saturday they had killed a missing American commando they claimed to have captured in eastern Afghanistan last month. The U.S. military said it had no information to support the claim.
"We killed him at 11 o'clock today; we killed him using a knife and chopped off his head," Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said from an undisclosed location. He said that the body had been dumped on a mountain in the eastern province of Kunar.
The U.S. military has said it has no information to suggest the Navy SEAL commando, part of a four-man team that went missing during a clash with militants in mountainous Kunar on June 28, has been captured.
Asked about the Taliban claim that the man had been killed, U.S. military spokeswoman Lieutenant Cindy Moore said: "I don't have any information on that."
Hakimi, whose information has often proved unreliable in the past, said the body of the soldier had been left on the top of a mountain in Kunar's Shegal district.
"He is wearing red clothes," he said. "We got the information we wanted from him during the interrogation."
Hakimi said earlier on Saturday that the man the guerrillas claimed to be holding was a commando officer and would be killed in two or three days following his interrogation.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency also quoted a guerrilla commander in Kunar, Mohammad Ismail, as saying that the commando had been killed.
AIP quoted Hakimi as saying the killing followed a decision by the Taliban's council of religious leaders.
The U.S. military has said two of its missing commandos were found dead on Monday, having been "killed in action," while another had been rescued and one was missing.
A U.S. helicopter sent to aid the team was shot down the same day the team went missing during a battle with insurgents, with the loss of all 16 troops aboard. These were the U.S. forces' heaviest losses in a single combat operation since they overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.
Hundreds of U.S. soldiers, backed by Afghan troops and helicopters, have been searching for the missing commando in Kunar for the past 12 days.
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