U.S. Helicopter Crash Kills 16 in Afghanistan

A U.S. military helicopter crashed in bad weather Wednesday in southeast Afghanistan, killing at least 16 people in the deadliest air accident for American forces since they invaded the country more than three years ago.

U.S. military officials said dust storms were to blame for the CH-47 Chinook helicopter going down in a desert area of Ghazni province, about 100 miles south of the capital, Kabul.

The U.S. Central Command and Afghan authorities said it was highly unlikely that insurgent fire brought the aircraft down.

“We were on site about an hour after the crash and it was very windy in the area. Our initial thoughts are that enemy fire was not involved in this case,” said Abdul Rahman Sarjang, the chief of police in the city of Ghazni. He said circular winds could be felt in the area around 2 p.m., about the time the crash occurred.

Navy Lt. Cindy Moore, a military spokeswoman, said 13 of the dead were American military personnel and three were U.S. government contractors, Associated Press reported today.

Two other U.S. service members were unaccounted for.

Associated Press Television News showed Afghan security forces around burning wreckage.

Moore said the helicopter was one of two Chinooks returning to the U.S.-run Bagram air base, near Kabul, from a routine mission in southern Afghanistan.

The second helicopter returned to base safely.

This is the eighth crash of a U.S. military helicopter in Afghanistan since operations began in late 2001. In the most recent, in October, one soldier died.

A plane crash killed six Americans, three of them soldiers, in November.

Before Wednesday’s crash, the Defense Department reported that 122 U.S. soldiers had died since U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban government and hunt for Al Qaeda forces that had been sheltered by the regime. Most deaths resulted from accidents, including plane crashes and explosions of munitions left over from the Afghan-Soviet war of the 1980s.

About 17,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan. Their main mission is to battle remaining Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, especially along the southeastern border with Pakistan.

U.S. troops also are training Afghan army soldiers and operating “provincial reconstruction teams” that seek to rebuild war-ravaged regions while gathering intelligence on enemy forces.

President Bush was briefed on Wednesday’s crash, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

“The indications from the military are that it was a result of bad weather,” McClellan said. “And the families of the fallen are in the thoughts and prayers of the president and Mrs. Bush and all Americans.”

Times staff writer John Hendren in Washington contributed to this report.