Kandahar, Afghanistan – A NATO aircraft crashed Saturday in southern Afghanistan, killing 14 British servicemen, but the alliance said there was no indication hostile fire was involved.
The crash came a day after fighting across the volatile south killed nine Afghan policemen, at least 13 suspected Taliban and a British soldier.
The “aircraft was supporting a NATO mission. It went off the radar and crashed in an open area in Kandahar” province, about 12 miles west of Kandahar city, said Maj. Scott Lundy, spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.
The British Ministry of Defense said the dead included 12 Royal Air Force personnel, a Royal Marine and an army soldier.
Lundy said “there was no indication of an enemy attack.” He gave no other details, but an ISAF statement said the plane’s crew reported a technical problem before going down. It also said that “enemy action has been discounted at this stage.” However, shortly after the crash, a purported spokesman for the Taliban, Abdul Khaliq, claimed responsibility. “We used a Stinger missile to shoot down the aircraft,” he said.
Haji Eisamuddin, a local tribal elder, told The Associated Press by phone that the plane’s wreckage was burning in an open field.
“I can see three, four helicopters in the sky, and coalition forces are also arriving in the area,” he said.
In the deadliest clash Friday, insurgents attacked a police checkpoint, killing five officers and wounding seven in the Grieshk district of Helmand province, about 250 miles southwest of Kabul, said Ghulam Muhiddin, the Helmand governor’s spokesman.
Police returned fire and killed three Taliban and wounded two, he said, but the attackers fled with four captured officers.
Muhiddin said hundreds of police were hunting for them Saturday.
Suspected Taliban militants also ambushed a convoy carrying a district police chief in southwestern Nimroz province, killing the commander, Juma Khan, and three policemen, Nimroz Gov. Ghulam Dasthaqir said. Police killed three of the ambushers, he said.
Four Taliban were killed in an exchange of fire with police in the Garamsair district of southern Zabul province, district police chief Ghulam Rasool said. He said police suffered no casualties.
In a remote part of Zabul, a police raid on a Taliban hide-out triggered a shootout that killed three insurgents, provincial police chief Noor Mohammad Paktin said.
Insurgents killed a British soldier and wounded another in Helmand, where Britain has deployed nearly 4,000 troops as part of the NATO-led security force.
In eastern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber in an explosives-laden Toyota attacked a convoy of Afghan and U.S.-led coalition troops in Nangarhar province, provincial police spokesman Ghafor Khan said.
He said a coalition solider, an Afghan soldier and an Afghan translator were wounded.
A coalition spokeswoman, Lt. Tamara Lawrence, confirmed a coalition soldier and an Afghan soldier were wounded, but said it was a roadside bomb.
