This is dreadful news.
A US soldier is believed to have been captured by the Taliban near Afghanistan’s border region.
Reuters reported:
A U.S. soldier is believed to have been captured by insurgents in eastern Afghanistan’s border region, a U.S. military official said on Thursday.
“A soldier who has been missing since June 30 is now believed to have been captured by insurgent forces,” the official said.
A statement by U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, the headquarters of American troops operating in the country, said further details were being withheld to protect the soldier.
“We are exhausting all available resources to ascertain his whereabouts and provide for his safe return,” the statement said.
A top Taliban official told reporters that they are holding a US soldier and his three Afghan companions.
The AFP reported:
A commander of the Taliban’s hardline Haqqani faction told an AFP reporter that his militia had captured a US trooper and three Afghans in the province of Paktika, which borders Pakistan.
“One of our commanders named Mawlawi Sangin has captured a coalition soldier along with his three Afghan guards in Yousuf Khail district of Paktika province,” the commander, named only Bahram, told AFP.
“The coalition soldier has been taken to a safe place,” he said.
The Haqqani network is the same group that kidnapped New York Times reporter last year.
The Washington Post reported:
The Haqqani network, believed to control large swaths of eastern Afghanistan, has emerged in recent years as a powerful antagonist to U.S. efforts to stabilize that country and root out insurgent havens in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. The network is controlled by insurgent leader Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Sirajuddin Haqqani, and is suspected of launching a number of spectacular attacks in recent years, including a deadly suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed more than 50 people in July 2008.
New York Times reporter David Rodhe was traveling to meet a commander with the group when he was kidnapped last November. Rodhe escaped his captors two weeks ago.
Greyhawk has more.
UPDATE: CNN is reporting that the US soldier was captured and then sold to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
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