17 Spanish troops killed in helicopter crash in Afghanistan

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Spanish troops die in Afghan crash

Tuesday, August 16, 2005; Posted: 10:32 a.m. EDT (14:32 GMT)

There are 800 Spanish troops serving as peacekeepers in Afghanistan.

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Spain's defense minister has said he does not rule out hostile fire as the possible cause of a helicopter crash in Afghanistan that killed 17 Spanish soldiers.

"It could have been an accident or an attack," Bono said, speaking to reporters at the Defense Ministry in downtown Madrid. "The causes have not been fully clarified."

Earlier Tuesday, Spanish officials confirmed the country's first troop fatalities in Afghanistan. The troops were serving under NATO command as part of a Spanish contingent of about 800 peacekeeping troops there.

A spokesman in the Spanish prime minister's office told CNN "a helicopter crashed" although he had no immediate further information on the circumstances of the accident, near the western Afghan city of Herat.

Fighting has been raging between U.S. and Afghan forces and Taliban militants during the runup to the September 18 Afghan parliamentary elections.

But Herat is part of a region closer to Iran, an area that has not been plagued by the kind of fighting that has been raging along Afghanistan's eastern border.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, on vacation, has been informed and was in contact with Spain's Defense Ministry, the spokesman said.

A second helicopter, flying near the one that crashed, made an emergency landing and there were injuries on that craft, Spanish Defense Ministry spokesmen told CNN partner station CNN+.

More than two years ago, 62 Spanish troops returning from peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan died when their plane crashed in Turkey.

There have been recent helicopter crashes in Afghanistan.

In June, 16 U.S. service members aboard a MH-47 helicopter died when their helicopter crashed near the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The U.S. military believes the chopper was downed by a rocket-propelled grenade in that area, where there has been fighting between between coalition forces and militants.

In April, 15 soldiers and three civilian contractors were killed when a coalition helicopter -- a CH-47 Chinook -- traveling in bad weather crashed near Ghazni, roughly 100 miles southwest of Kabul.

Operation Enduring Freedom, which ousted the Taliban government that harbored the al Qaeda terror network that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, started a month after the strikes that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Fighting has persisted over the years, claiming 224 American troop lives.

Sixteen Germans, seven Canadians, four Britons, three Danes, three Romanians, two French, 2 Italians, 1 Norwegian, and 1 Australian also have died in Operation Enduring Freedom.

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A second helicopter, flying near the one that crashed, made an emergency landing and there were injuries on that craft, Spanish Defense Ministry spokesmen told CNN partner station CNN+.

That doesn't sound like it was an accident.

Hopefully, the elections will be a success, and then maybe things will quiet down a bit there.