KABUL, Afghanistan — A U.S. twin-rotor Chinook helicopter suffered engine failure and crashed Sunday morning in southeastern Afghanistan, killing eight soldiers and injuring 14, said a spokesman at Bagram air base, north of Kabul. All 22 on board were Americans, he said.
The spokesman, Maj. William Mitchell, denied claims by the Taliban that they had shot down the helicopter. "The pilot of the helicopter sent a radio transmission saying he was experiencing an engine problem, and the aircraft had a sudden, unexplained loss of power, and that is why it crashed," he said.
The helicopter had been on a transportation mission, not a combat mission, and was moving service members from one area to another in eastern Afghanistan, he said.
The helicopter came down in Jar-e-Bazargan, in Shahjoy district of Zabul province, a mountainous area reaching to the Pakistan border where Taliban insurgents remain active, according to Dilbar Jan Arman, the governor of Zabul province. U.S. Special Forces and infantry are based in the province, alongside Romanian troops.
A Taliban commander, Hayatullah Khan, told Reuters by telephone from a secret location that the guerrillas had shot down the aircraft. The governor said that was a lie.
The Taliban has shot down two helicopters in the five years of U.S. operations in Afghanistan, but there have been at least three other fatal crashes of United States or NATO helicopters that resulted from bad weather or technical problems.
NATO and U.S. forces have been stepping up operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan in recent days to try to pre-empt an expected spring offensive by Taliban insurgents.
In a statement on Sunday, NATO reported a successful joint operation with Afghan forces in the southern part of Helmand province, in which they raided three suspected Taliban compounds linked by a tunnel complex. The operation focused on an area around Garmser where British and Afghan troops fought fierce battles with Taliban insurgents last summer, and lost control of the town several times.
Taliban insurgents remain strong in the area, crossing into Helmand province from the Pakistani border and traveling across the desert in pickup trucks to Garmser. The area is also one of the main smuggling routes for the opium and heroin trade.
The alliance also said it had killed several Taliban commanders in airstrikes in recent days. One of those was Mullah Manan, a key figure in the recent Taliban attack that overran the town of Musa Qala and in attacks on Kajaki dam, an important U.S. aid project.
In a statement, NATO said the mullah was killed, along with 10 others, on Feb. 14 by a precision airstrike. Those killed were in a building in northern Helmand that had been under surveillance, the statement said.
NATO forces also reported killing two Afghan civilians in two separate incidents when the people approached too close to NATO military convoys. Fearful of suicide bomb attacks, NATO forces have repeatedly fired on civilians in southern Afghanistan, and even, on one recent occasion, on an Afghan Army driver.