Fourteen US soldiers and civilians have died in two helicopter crashes in America's deadliest day in Afghanistan for four years.
In the first incident, a helicopter went down in Badghis province in the west of the country after raiding a compound harbouring an opium-trafficking gang linked to the insurgency.
The US military said the helicopter, believed to be a Chinook, crashed after leaving the compound, where a firefight had left more than a dozen insurgents dead.
Seven US soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Agency officers were killed, while 11 American soldiers, one US civilian and 14 Afghans were injured.
A Taliban spokesman claimed it had shot down the helicopter, but the Nato-led coalition said the crash was “not believed to be from enemy action”.
A military spokesman described Badghis province as “where we see the nexus between the insurgency and the narcotics trade”. It has has seen repeated raids by helicopter-borne US special forces.
The province has threatened to slip from government control with a sharp increase in Taliban activity funded by opium growing in the province.
Meanwhile a US marine UH1 helicopter and an AH1 Cobra collided in the southern province of Helmand, leaving four more US troops dead and wounding two others. Hostile fire was ruled out in the crash.
Both crashes were under investigation, but inquiries were being hampered by “combat conditions”.
Helicopters are vital to coalition operations in Afghanistan where there are few roads and the terrain is mountainous and impassable for ground vehicles.
The highest US death toll in one day since a helicopter crash in June 2005 came as President Barack Obama prepared to meet his security advisers to grapple again with a new strategy for the troubled eight-year-long conflict.
The Obama administration is debating whether to send 40,000 reinforcements to the country after General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, said the coalition risked failure without more resources.
Mr Obama has been accused of “dithering” over the request, just as opinion polls show the majority of Americans oppose the war.
His deliberations have been complicated by the fraud-riddled Afghan presidential elections which were supposed to choose a strong, legitimate leader in Kabul, but have instead become mired in allegations of ballot-stuffing.
A total of 46 US troops have died in Afghanistan in October in what is already by far the bloodiest year in the country since the 2001 US-led invasion.
In June 2005, 16 American special forces members were killed in the eastern province of Kunar when their Chinook helicopter was shot down by the Taliban.
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