Two die in American helicopter 'downed by dust, not enemy fire'

The US suffered its first operational casualties in the Afghanistan campaign when a helicopter supporting a special forces strike crashed in a landing accident in Pakistan on Saturday, killing two crew members and injuring others.

A senior US defence official said the helicopter apparently crashed due to a problem called "brownout", when the rotor blades stirred up dust and other debris around the aircraft as it descended. The crash occurred near the remote Pakistani airbase of Dalbandin, about 50 miles from the Afghan border in Baluchistan province, in an area off limits to all but restricted military personnel.

The Taliban's deputy ambassador in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, said that the helicopter had been struck by a ground-to-air missile inside Afghan territory.

But the US denied that the helicopter had ever left Pakistan. During the fortnight-long bombing campaign, the Taliban have failed to damage a single coalition plane.

Even America's most successful war of recent times – the Gulf War – is not without embarrassment. Out of the 148 American servicemen and women who died in battle, 35 were killed by "friendly fire". US aircraft also killed nine British servicemen. Another 72 of 467 Americans wounded in action were injured inadvertently by their own comrades.

Two comparable special forces missions in earlier campaigns ended in disaster. In April 1980, a helicopter rescue operation to free 53 hostages held in the US embassy in Tehran resulted instead in the deaths of eight servicemen.A special forces mission launched in Mogadishu in October 1993 to capture military advisers close to a Somali warlord resulted in even greater loss of life: 17 soldiers were killed.

Military expert Nick Cook, aviation consultant with Jane's Defence Weekly, told The Independent on Sunday he was not surprised the first ground war operations had already resulted in two deaths. "In this high-tempo, high-risk operation it is going to happen. It is, regrettably, something you would expect," he said.