US service member killed, 2 wounded in Afghanistan attack

Details remained uncertain about the Monday battle in Marja, in the southern province of Helmand, which has re-emerged as a battleground between Taliban forces and the US-backed military.

Western media reports said that the action in Marja came in an operation in which the Afghan forces were seeking to reopen the road between Marja and the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah to the northeast in Helmand.

Cook said that two HH-60 U.S. Air Force “Pave Hawk” medevac helicopters were sent to take away the American casualties, but one took fire.

On Tuesday, Mr Cook said: “US special operators are… allowed to engage and train, advise and assist their special operations counterparts”.

“There is fighting on the ground as we speak”, Cook said, several hours after the casualties were first announced. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack which he said was aimed at a convoy of foreign forces. The unrest in Helmand, blighted by a huge opium harvest that helps fund the insurgency, comes after the Taliban briefly captured Kunduz city in September – their biggest victory in 14 years of war.

A United States force of around 9,800 troops remains in Afghanistan and, with contributions from other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries, including the UK, there are around 13,000 foreign troops still in Afghanistan.

The U.S. service member killed in action and the wounded personnel have been extracted from the Marjah, Afghanistan site where they came under fire. In addition to the US troops, the British government also dispatched a small team of advisers to the province – a place that bore the brunt of their casualties in the years prior to the British withdrawal in 2014.

Afghan security personnel are seen through the shattered windshield of a damaged auto after a suicide vehicle bomb attack near the Kabul airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“His thoughts and prayers are obviously with the families of those injured and killed in this situation”.