Commandos were targeting Taliban leader

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- The Pentagon confirmed Monday a helicopter that crashed in Afghanistan killing 38 U.S. and Afghan military personnel was shot down by insurgents.

A rocket-propelled grenade took out the Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter Saturday in eastern Wardak province, Pentagon officials said in a release. Five of the 30 U.S. casualties were aircrew members and 25 were members of U.S. Special Operations Command.

The attack team had been on a mission targeting a Taliban leader, the U.S. military said.

The deaths of the Americans, including 22 elite Navy SEALS, constituted the worst single-day toll on U.S. forces in the decade-long Afghan war. The Taliban had claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft.

Pentagon spokesman Marine Col. Dave Lapan said an investigation would determine the circumstances leading to the helicopter crash and cautioned against reporting leaked information that could turn out to be inaccurate.

"Any conclusions are premature until we conduct an investigation to determine the facts," he told reporters.

"It's never helpful when people get out in the immediate aftermath of an incident like this and start providing information that one, can be inaccurate and lead to inaccurate reporting, and two, can be speculative about what may or may not have happened.

"This one single incident does not represent any watershed or trend. As we have said continuously, the Taliban was going to come back hard. They weren't going to take the losses that they have suffered lightly. They were going to try to inflict casualties not only on us, but the Afghans, and those are the things we are seeing."

The SEALs and others aboard the Chinook were on their way to help a Rangers unit under enemy fire in Wardak. Those killed in the crash also included a civilian and seven Afghan commandos.

Combing operations continued at the wreckage site, said Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

CNN quoted a military official as saying the majority of the SEALS who died in the crash were part of the unit that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in the May 2 raid on his compound deep inside Pakistan. However, those dead did not include men involved in the bin Laden operation, the official said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who telephoned U.S. President Barack Obama to offer his condolences, called a security meeting of his top advisers to discuss the helicopter crash.

Four other NATO soldiers died in separate incidents during the weekend in the east and the south, CNN said.

The incidents are occurring as NATO forces hand over security responsibilities to Afghan forces. The current timetable calls for the Afghan forces to take control of security for the entire country by 2014.