Taliban claim capture of 2 U.S. troops

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two U.S. Navy servicemen disappeared in a dangerous area of eastern Afghanistan, prompting an air and ground search, and the Taliban later claimed to have captured them, NATO and Afghan officials said Saturday.

The two left their compound in the Afghan capital, Kabul, in a vehicle Friday afternoon but never returned, NATO said in a statement. The abduction prompted a wide manhunt by the American military, including searches by military helicopters and radio broadcasts of a $20,000 reward for information leading to their return.

Elsewhere, five U.S. troops died in separate bombings in the south, setting July on course to become the deadliest month for Americans in the nearly 9-year-old war.

A NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of search operations, confirmed the two servicemen were Navy personnel, but to avoid jeopardizing search operations would not identify their unit. The official said it was unclear what the two were doing or what would lead them to leave their compound. The official would not say whether the two were on official business.

“Every available asset is being brought to bear” to find them, said Lt. Col. Joseph Breasseale, a NATO spokesman in Kabul.

Samer Gul, the district chief in the Charkh district of Logar province, said that a four-wheel-drive armored sport utility vehicle was seen Friday night by a guard working for the district chief’s office. The guard tried to flag down the vehicle, carrying a driver and a passenger, but itkept going, Gul said.

“They stopped in the main bazaar of Charkh district. The Taliban saw them in the bazaar,” Gul said. “They didn’t touch them in the bazaar, but notified other Taliban that a four-wheel vehicle was coming their way.”

The second group of Taliban tried to stop the vehicle, but when it didn’t, insurgents opened fire and the occupants in the vehicle shot back, he said.

“Maybe they wanted to go to Paktia province or to the American base, but they came down the wrong road toward Charkh,” Gul said. “They didn’t pay any attention to the police. Otherwise we could have kept them from going into an insecure area and now this unfortunate incident has happened.”

Din Mohammed Darwesh, the spokesman for the Logar provincial governor, said the two Americans were dressed in civilian clothes when abducted in Charkh, a Taliban hotbed.

“The area is very bad in terms of security,” he said. He said they were seized in an area locally known as Matani, inside Charkh, about 10 miles south of the provincial capital, Pul-i-Alam. The area is about 60 miles south of Kabul.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, called Afghan reporters in Logar on Saturday and told them that the militant movement had captured the two Americans and killed one of them, according to an Afghan reporter and the governor’s spokesman. NATO officials said they could not confirm the statements of the Afghan officials or the Taliban.

The Taliban have reportedly claimed responsibility for abducting the two Americans, but Darwesh said local officials knew little more. “We don’t know what their demands are,” he said.

A NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the two were American military servicemen, not civilians, nor members of a State Department provincial reconstruction team, but said he did not know whether they were wearing military uniforms or civilian clothes.

The only U.S. serviceman known to be in Taliban captivity is Spc. Bowe Bergdahl of Hailey, Idaho, who disappeared June 30, 2009, in neighboring Paktika province, an area heavily infiltrated by the Haqqani network, which has deep links to al-Qaida. Military officials had initially reported that he had walked off his post in eastern Afghanistan. But in a video sent out by the Taliban, Bergdahl said he had been captured after he lagged behind during a patrol.

New York Times reporter David Rohde was also kidnapped in Logar province while trying to make contact with a Taliban commander. He and an Afghan colleague escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity, most of it spent in Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.

Mohammad Nasir Medaruz, director of a radio station in Logar called Meli Pegham, or “National Message,” said he had received a phone call from coalition officials asking that he broadcast a message offering $10,000 for information about the whereabouts of each missing serviceman.

“I told them that Logar is not a safe area and if I broadcast that, I could get attacked,” Medaruz said.

He said that if the military officials paid him, he would broadcast the information and say that it was an “advertisement.”

He said he did not broadcast the information, but another radio station, sponsored by the military in Logar, did air the message and offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the servicemen’s safe return.

ROADSIDE BOMBINGS

On Saturday in the same district in Logar, the manager of an Afghan construction company and his driver were kidnapped, according to Darwesh. The two Afghans who were captured worked with Afghan Korean Construction Co., he said.

The five American troops died in roadside bombings in the south - four in a single blast. A fifth serviceman was killed in a separate attack, according to NATO.

The latest deaths brought to 75 the number of international troops killed in Afghanistan this month, including 56 Americans. Many of the deaths have occurred in the south where Afghan and NATO forces are ramping up operations against the Taliban in their southern strongholds,hoping to enable the Afghan government to expand its control in the volatile region.

On Tuesday, an international conference in Kabul endorsed President Hamid Karzai’s plan for Afghan security forces to assume responsibility for protecting the country by the end of 2014. President Barack Obama has pledged to begin removing U.S. troops starting in July 2011, although he has linked the draw down to security conditions on the ground.

Information for this article was contributed by Deb Riechmann and Rahim Faiez of The Associated Press, by Joshua Partlow and Javed Hamdard of The Washington Post and by Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Sangar Rahimi of The New York Times.