Searchers hoping some SEALs alive

WASHINGTON — There was guarded optimism Friday that some or all four members of a SEAL team missing in the mountains of Afghanistan could be alive.

A Pentagon official said Friday that "radio transmissions" had given U.S. forces more hope than they had had the previous day that the missing SEALs had survived. He said he was not able to be more specific.

As first reported Thursday on Armytimes.com, a SEAL reconnaissance team remained missing after the crash Tuesday of a helicopter rushing in 16 special operations troops on a mission to rescue the commandos.

All 16 aboard the MH-47 Chinook were killed, apparently after the helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The dead included members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and members of SEAL Team 10.

Three days after the event, details were still murky and many questions remained unanswered.

The events that led to the tragedy began when a helicopter inserted a small reconnaissance element from SEAL Team 10, based at Little Creek, Va., into the mountains near Asadabad, in Kunar province. Intelligence had indicated a large concentration of enemy forces in the region, according to military sources.

The SEALs landed and hiked to a spot in rugged terrain where they established an observation post. Within several hours, al-Qaida or Taliban forces attacked the SEALs with small arms fire, and the SEALs called for a quick reaction force, or QRF, to help them, the sources said.

The QRF, consisting of at least two MH-47 Chinooks from the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, flew toward the beleaguered SEALs, sources said. It is not clear whether the SEALs on the ground were still at the observation post, or had moved in an attempt to evade their attackers. When the helicopters arrived in the vicinity of the observation post, more than an hour after the SEALs called for help, a military source said, one of the Chinooks was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

The pilots of a second aircraft on the mission saw and reported that their sister ship had been hit by an RPG, said Marine Lt. Gen. James Conway, director of operations on the Joint Staff, in a June 30 Pentagon news conference.

The stricken Chinook, from the 160th's 3rd Battalion, stationed at Hunter Army Airfield, Ga., either crashed into or tried to land on a mountainside, but rolled down the steep slope into a ravine, according to military officials.

"We were right in that valley," said an Army aviation officer who was previously deployed to Afghanistan. "It's very steep and it's unforgiving terrain."