7 Germans Die in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan -- New harm befell foreign military forces here Saturday as seven German peacekeepers were killed in the apparent crash-landing of their helicopter only hours after the first combat death of a U.S. soldier since May.

The crash capped what was among the most violent weeks in Afghanistan since Sept. 5, when a car bomb killed at least 25 people in Kabul and President Hamid Karzai narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the southern city of Kandahar. Security has been tight and tensions have been rising with the approach of today’s one-year anniversary of Karzai’s appointment as interim president.

The helicopter accident, thought to have been caused by a mechanical failure, also claimed the lives of two youths on the ground at the crash site, a largely industrial area near the airport, according to Kabul Police Chief Abdul Basir.

Col. Andreas Steffan, a spokesman for the German contingent of the International Security Assistance Force, said the chopper was on a routine mission when it went down just before 4 p.m. The Germans are part of a 22-nation, 4,700-soldier peacekeeping force charged with policing Kabul.

German technical experts were scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan today to try to determine the cause of the crash. Witnesses saw a fire on board the chopper shortly before but heard no explosion to indicate a rocket attack, Steffan said.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department identified the U.S. soldier killed earlier Saturday as Sgt. Steven Checo, 22, of New York, a member of the 504th Infantry Division. Checo died in a firefight near the village of Shkin in the unsettled southeastern province of Paktika, where Al Qaeda and Taliban remnants continue to harass U.S. military units from hide-outs across the border in Pakistan.

The skirmish took place after an armored convoy of U.S. soldiers approached “seven to nine” suspicious individuals about three miles from the U.S. base at Shkin, spokesman Maj. Stephen Clutter said. Soldiers then dismounted their vehicles to give chase, and the suspects began firing before fleeing. Although the U.S. platoon quickly received air support from A-10 aircraft, no enemy soldiers were captured or killed.

The fatality was the 26th suffered in action by U.S. forces since the war on terrorism was mounted after last year’s Sept. 11 attacks. An additional 28 soldiers have died in nonhostile incidents, including plane crashes and other accidents.

Despite such incidents, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Myers told reporters at nearby Bagram air base during a visit Saturday that the country is a better place to live than it was a year ago and that progress is being made in the fight against terrorism.

“My assessment is that things continue to get better over here,” the general said. “We know there are going to be times when U.S. forces will get shot at ... and that we’re going to take some casualties, unfortunately, and we did have a tragic death last night.”

But he added: “We’re making progress every day, and not just the military but the whole international effort ... to make Afghanistan a better place to live.”

The Pakistani border, across which the attackers were believed to have fled Saturday, will be a “problem for some time to come because of the free movement of population back and forth,” Myers said. But he said he was satisfied with the Pakistani government’s cooperation in efforts to secure the border, including the arrest of 400 terrorist suspects.

On Tuesday, two U.S. soldiers were seriously injured outside Kabul’s main money changers’ market when a grenade was thrown into their parked car. Two suspects arrested in connection with that attack are to be interrogated soon by U.S. forces, Afghanistan commander Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill told reporters Saturday.

On Thursday, an assailant killed himself and two Afghans in an attack on the main camp of the German ISAF contingent, about six miles east of Kabul.

The two incidents are thought to have been the first direct attacks on multinational forces in or near the capital since the fall a year ago of the fundamentalist Taliban regime, although the city has been the scene of numerous bombings and rocket attacks.

But for his part, McNeill insisted that the security situation in Kabul is improving.

“By and large, when you consider that 1 million refugees have been pushed back into that city in the last year, I think Kabul’s doing pretty well. But you can’t put a Western template on it,” McNeill said. The attacks Tuesday and Thursday were more “casual than planned professionally,” he said.

At the same time, McNeill said, he expected “sympathetic” terrorist attacks in Afghanistan to increase if the United States leads a war on Iraq.