14 Americans Die in Afghan Helicopter Crashes

By DEXTER FILKINS

KABUL — Fourteen Americans were killed in Afghanistan Monday in two incidents involving helicopters, making it one of the single deadliest days in America’s eight year-old war here.

Neither crash appeared to involve hostile fire, American military officials said.

In the most lethal of the two crashes, seven American servicemen and three agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration died when their Chinook twin-rotor helicopter crashed in western Afghanistan following a firefight with Taliban insurgents. Twenty-six people were injured: 11 American servicemen, one American civilian and 14 Afghan soldiers.

The crash followed a gun battle with insurgents that broke out when the Americans and Afghans raided a compound believed to harbor drug traffickers. The Americans and the Afghans killed more than a dozen fighters, military officials in Kabul said. The Chinook crashed as the American and Afghan forces were leaving.

It was unclear exactly where either the firefight or the crash occurred in western Afghanistan. A spokesman for the American command here said that officers were not disclosing the location of the crash because they wanted to protect the Americans who were still working at the scene to recover the helicopter.

Drug enforcement agents often accompany American soldiers and marines on operations in Afghanistan. The country is the largest producer of opium in the world, and the Taliban oversee and tax much of that production. Firefights of the kind that unfolded Monday are not uncommon.

Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a spokesman for the American military here, said the military “was “98 percent sure” that insurgents did not cause the crash.


In the second incident, four American servicemen died and two were injured when two helicopters collided. The military released few details on the crash, but said that insurgents were not to blame.

The military also said it carried out a series of operations in eastern and southern Afghanistan Sunday, killing more than a dozen insurgents and detaining six suspected militants.

Two other American soldiers were killed in separate incidents over the weekend in eastern Afghanistan, the military said. One died when struck by a homemade bomb, the other from wounds suffered during an insurgent attack.

Also Monday, Abdullah Abdullah, who faces a run-off election next month against President Hamid Karzai, demanded the resignation of the chief of the country’s Independent Election Commission, on the grounds that he could not ensure a clean vote in the second round.

The target of Mr. Abdullah’s demand was Azizullah Ludin, a Karzai appointee. Last month, after the voting was done and reports of fraud had begun to roll in, Mr. Ludin and the rest of the commissioners — also appointed by Mr. Karzai — decided that they were unable to disqualify fraudulent ballots.

In the end, another body — the Electoral Complaints Commission — did that for them. They threw out nearly a million ballots cast for Mr. Karzai third of his total. That pulled Mr. Karzai below the 50 percent threshold; hence the run-off with Dr. Abdullah, the second-place finisher.

“He has left no credibility for the institution, and unfortunately for himself,” Dr. Abdullah said of Mr. Ludin.

Speaking at a news conference here, Mr. Abdullah made a list of other demands that he said needed to be met in order for the second round to remain untainted by fraud: dismissing local election officials in the areas where the most prolific fraud occurred; suspending at least four ministers who are campaigning for Mr. Karzai; and allowing of more observers to accompany local police chiefs and district governors.

Western diplomats in Kabul have said that some of those changes are already in the works. But so far, there is little evidence that Afghan officials — most of them appointed by Mr. Karzai — intend to carry them out. In an interview last week, Mr. Ludin said he would not dismiss any local election officials until after he had conducted thorough investigations, which, he said, could not be completed until after the run-off election.

Mr. Abdullah also demanded the closure of what he called “ghost” polling centers: polling cites located in areas too insecure for government forces or election observers to reach. Many such polling centers never opened on Election Day; it was in these places where Mr. Karzai’s backers are believed to have orchestrated much of the fraud.

Western officials here are pressing Mr. Ludin to drastically reduce the number of polling centers in insecure areas. But so far, there has no public announcements of exactly how many will be closed.

Mr. Karzai, speaking in a radio interview, dismissed Mr. Abdullah’s demands.

“If we talk about making changes in the government just seven days before the election, it will damage the process, and the election,” Mr. Karzai told the BBC. “It will not be in the interest of the country.”

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