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Tanya
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 13 Aug 2004
Posts: 570
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 Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 7:44 pm Post subject: Source: Special ops member rescued in Afghanistan |
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http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/07/03/afghan.missing/index.html
(CNN) -- "One member of a U.S. special operations reconnaissance team missing in Afghanistan since Tuesday has been rescued, a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity told CNN.
The team member "evaded the enemy and was successfully rescued by U.S. forces," the official said.
No other details are being released because the search for other missing members of the team continues, the official said."
More at above link:
I found the article at http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ |
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Navy_Navy_Navy
Admin
Joined: 07 May 2004
Posts: 5777
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| Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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Thank God!
I didn't even know that we were missing anyone - I haven't kept up with the news.
But, I'm so grateful that this one escaped and is safe. What good news for this weekend.
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother |
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USAFE5
PO2
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 362
Location: Reno Nevada
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| Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2005 5:54 pm Post subject: |
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And now a second one has been found alive but unfortunately
U.S. Confirms Two Missing SEALS Found Dead
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161527,00.html
_________________
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I’m here to help." Ronald Reagan |
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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 4:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Apparently the helicopter that was shot down last week killing all on board was on a mission to rescue these original missing guys. |
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Navy_Navy_Navy
Admin
Joined: 07 May 2004
Posts: 5777
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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Oh no.
Rest in peace, brothers. We will pray for you and your families and your brothers-in-arms.
If the last missing man is alive, please let him be found safe.
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother |
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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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| Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2005/nr20050706-3888.html
| Quote: | No. 683-05
IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 6, 2005
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DoD Identifies Navy Casualties
The Department of Defense announced today the death of two sailors who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny P. Dietz, 25, of Littleton, Colo. Dietz was assigned to SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team Two, Virginia Beach, Va.
Lt. Michael P. Murphy, 29, of Patchogue, N.Y. Murphy was assigned to SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Both died while conducting counter-terrorism operations in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. Coalition forces located the service members while conducting a combat search and rescue operation July 4 in Kunar Province. Both sailors’ whereabouts had been unknown since June 28.
For further information related to this release, contact Naval Special Warfare Command Public Affairs at (619) 437-5133. |
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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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| Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 1:12 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161767,00.html
| Quote: | Taliban Claims SEAL Hostage, Threatens to Kill Him
Thursday, July 07, 2005
WASHINGTON — On Thursday a purported Taliban spokesman reiterated a claim that his group is holding a missing U.S. commando and said that insurgent leaders had decided to kill him. No proof was offered to back up the claim.
The U.S. military had no comment on the latest claim, saying only that they are making every effort to locate the commando.
The Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, has said previously that the Taliban are holding the commando, who has been missing in Afghanistan for 10 days. But his information has in the past frequently proven exaggerated or untrue, and his exact tie to the Taliban leadership cannot be independently verified.
U.S. military forces in Afghanistan are conducting an "aggressive search" for a Navy SEAL who has been missing since June 28, a commander on the ground told FOX News.
"It's nighttime and a lot happens for us at night," the commander said. When asked if hopes were fading for finding the SEAL alive, he said, "Oh, no, I would not characterize it that way at all."
The search is on to find the final member of an elite four-man Navy SEAL commando team. One SEAL has been rescued, while the bodies of two others were recovered Monday and taken to the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, at Bagram, a U.S. military statement said. A transport helicopter sent in to rescue the four was shot down the day the team went missing, killing all 16 U.S. servicemen aboard.
The Department of Defense identified the two SEALS found dead as Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny P. Dietz, 25, of Littleton, Colo.; and Lt. Michael P. Murphy, 29, of Patchogue, N.Y.
Dietz was assigned to SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team Two, Virginia Beach, Va., while Murphy was assigned to SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Both died during counter-terrorism operations in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. Coalition forces fond the service members while conducting a combat search-and-rescue operation July 4 in Kunar Province. The sailors' whereabouts had been unknown since June 28.
"We're ... doing everything we can to find the last of the four SEALs. And it's a real priority, and something the president asked to get briefed on this morning," U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Another U.S. military spokesman, Col. James Yonts, would not go into details about the search to reporters. "We are very hopeful that we will recover this individual back into our care soon. We are working this very hard," he told reporters in Kabul.
He said the U.S. military has 300 troops in the area as well as numerous aircraft.
A U.S. military statement said the sole rescued serviceman was receiving medical treatment for "non-life-threatening injuries" at the Bagram base.
The commander who spoke to FOX News on condition of anonymity said the SEAL team found itself in a heavy firefight with a group of Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters when it called for backup.
The SEALs started moving out of the area and down a ravine when they came under more heavy small arms and rocket propelled grenades from another direction. The rescued SEAL remembers seeing two of his colleagues being shot — although he didn't know whether the shots were fatal, according to the commander.
The one SEAL was knocked unconscious from the concussion of an explosion nearby. When he woke up, it was night and he didn't see anyone. He then went to a pre-assigned checkpoint to get out of the area, the commander said.
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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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| Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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 I hope he is lying. about all of it.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,162006,00.html
| Quote: |
Taliban Claims Navy SEAL Killed
Saturday, July 09, 2005
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A purported Taliban spokesman said Saturday that the group has killed a missing American commando, but he offered no proof and the U.S. military said it was still searching for the Navy SEAL.
The commando is the last of a four-member elite commando team missing since June 28 in Kunar , near the Pakistani border. One of the men was rescued and the other two were found dead.
"This morning in Shagal district in Kunar province, the Taliban killed the American soldier and cut his head off," Mullah Latif Hakimi, the purported spokesman, told The Associated Press in a telephone call. "We left the body on a mountainside in this area so Afghan or U.S. soldiers there can find it."
Hakimi repeatedly has said the rebels were holding the commando. But information from him in the past has frequently proven exaggerated or untrue, and his exact tie to the Taliban leadership cannot be independently verified.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara (search), however, said "the search for the commando continued.
"The only proof we have is that he is missing," he said. "We will run down these reports to see if anything pans out."
When asked for evidence, Hakimi said, "the proof will be when the Americans find his body."
Hakimi said earlier this week that the rebels would release a video, but he made no mention of that Saturday.
"We have extracted very useful information as he was an important person. He gave us details about the American military strategy, their bases and future military plans," he said, without elaborating.
The Navy SEAL team went missing after a special forces helicopter carrying reinforcements to the mountainous area was shot down, killing all 16 Americans on board, the deadliest single attack on the U.S. military since the war here began in 2001.
The 16 troops on the helicopter were responding to a call for help from the four SEAL commandos on reconnaissance in the rugged Afghan mountains who were attacked by militants.
Afghanistan has seen an unprecedented spate of insurgent fighting that has left about 700 people dead since March and threatened to sabotage three years of progress toward peace. Afghan officials insist the violence will not disrupt landmark legislative elections slated for September.
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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Mullah Latif Hakimi
I want to remember this name. Sleep vigilantly Mullah Hakimi. |
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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 12:54 am Post subject: |
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from Drudge:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-524-1688012,00.html
| Quote: | July 10, 2005
Timesonline
Downed US Seals may have got too close to Bin Laden
Tony Allen-Mills, Washington and Andrew North, Kabul
::nobreak::THE first sign of trouble was a radio message requesting immediate extraction. A four-man team of US Navy Seal commandos had run into heavy enemy fire on a remote, thickly forested trail in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
Trouble turned to disaster when a US special forces helicopter carrying 16 men was shot down as it landed at the scene, killing all on board. Almost two weeks later, a mission that led to the worst US combat losses in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2001 has turned into an extraordinary manhunt. It has also opened an intriguing new front in the coalition’s battle against terrorism.
The story of Operation Red Wing, a US-led search for Taliban and Al-Qaeda guerrillas in the mountain wilderness of Kunar province, contains remarkable human drama and an unresolved military mystery.
For five days amid the hostile peaks and ravines along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, a lone American commando eluded the guerrillas who had killed at least two of his colleagues and destroyed the Chinook helicopter.
When the unnamed Seal finally collapsed from exhaustion he was found by a friendly Afghan villager who summoned US forces. The subsequent search for his colleagues turned up two bodies and the manhunt for the fourth commando continues this weekend despite claims by Taliban guerrillas yesterday that he had been captured and beheaded.
“We killed him at 11 o’clock today; we killed him using a knife and chopped off his head,” declared Abdul Latif Hakimi, a Taliban spokesman who has made several false claims in the past.
Yet whatever the final death toll from the worst incident in the history of the Seals — the Sea Air Land Commandos — there were tantalising hints that the original mission had been far from routine.
According to former special forces officers and other military sources, the four-man Seal strike team may have come too close to one of the US-led coalition’s highest-priority targets — perhaps Mullah Muhammad Omar, the former Taliban leader, or even Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda. Other military sources suggested the target was a regional Taliban commander suspected of links with Al-Qaeda.
More than 300 US troops were yesterday combing the area for signs of the missing commando and the militants who apparently used a portable rocket-propelled grenade launcher to destroy the Chinook.
Other helicopters and remotecontrolled aerial drones were flying over deep, inaccessible valleys. Rainstorms were slowing the search, and there was a danger of growing local hostility after claims that up to 25 civilians died when US aircraft bombed a compound in Kunar province last weekend.
US officials insisted the compound was used by militants and one spokesman said the attack with precision guided weapons was part of an “intelligence-driven” operation.
But Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s pro-US president, warned Washington that civilian casualties could erode public support for the coalition.
It was late in the evening of Tuesday, June 28, that Lieutenant Michael Murphy and the three members of his specialist team reported an encounter with the enemy.
Pentagon spokesmen said Murphy’s unit was engaged in general reconnaissance as part of a sweep through the region amid fears that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have quietly been regrouping and are preparing for an Iraq-style insurgency.
Yet other special forces sources noted that small Seal units like Murphy’s are primarily designed for concealment and stealth, which indicated a more specific mission.
“Its insertion represented an extraordinary risk,” said the author of an influential military blog known as Wretchard. “They would be operating in an area known to be a stronghold of the Taliban, where any contact with the enemy automatically meant they would be grossly overmatched.”
Another source noted that Murphy’s unit bore all the hallmarks of a long-range sniper team sent to hunt down a particular target. US Navy Seals are trained to spend long periods operating clandestinely.
“The fact that the US did not send in several hundred troops for a sweep instead of the four-man recon team strongly suggests the team’s mission was to fix a very high target before it could flee from an airmobile assault,” Wretchard said.
Whatever the team’s real objective, it found itself trapped in heavy rain with darkness falling. Seal veterans boast that they never call for help unless absolutely desperate. Exactly what befell Murphy and his team remains unknown, but commanders at Bagram airbase near Kabul wasted no time in dispatching eight more Seals on a helicopter crewed by eight members of an elite army unit.
As it was coming in to land in the Waigal valley, near the provincial capital of Asadabad, the helicopter was struck by what officers believe was a rocket-propelled grenade fired from the cover of nearby trees.
Lieutenant-General James Conway, chief of operations at the Pentagon, described it as a “pretty lucky shot” but when communications with the Chinook were lost, commanders were taking no chances. The next wave of troops landed a safe distance away and took 24 hours to reach the site, where it was confirmed that all 16 men on the helicopter had died.
For the four Seals on the ground, a desperate battle for survival had begun. Their story may not be told in full until the fate of the fourth member of the team is clear — the one Seal who survived has been debriefed by military officers but the Pentagon has released only the barest outline of his story for fear of compromising continuing operations in the area.
From the details released, it appears that the Seals may have dumped their backpacks to move faster on steep terrain. Former special forces sources said that when facing a superior enemy, the commandos would give each other covering fire as they mounted a phased retreat.
Coalition commanders acknowledge that for all their superior weaponry and communications, US forces are at a disadvantage in fighting in the Afghan mountains.
At some point in the mountain battle, Murphy, 29, was killed. So was Petty Officer Danny Dietz, 25. But at least one of the four Seals survived.
When he was found last weekend he was several miles from the helicopter wreckage. A friendly tribal elder notified authorities that he was caring for a wounded American. The commando was airlifted to Bagram, where his injuries were said not to be life-threatening.
US officials have not yet explained how the surviving Seal might have become separated from his missing colleague. The two dead commandos were said to have been “killed in action”.
To some US military sources, the strength of the force sent into the area suggested more than a simple search for a soldier who has been missing for 11 days. The manhunt may be providing cover for what might have been the original mission — to track down an elusive “high value” target who may once again be about to slip away.
Andrew North is the BBC’s Kabul correspondent. His reports on the security situation in Afghanistan are broadcast on all BBC news
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