Taliban negotiating over captured Navy personnel in Afghanistan
A Taliban faction that said it had killed one U.S. serviceman and captured another offered to exchange the slain man’s body for an unspecified number of insurgent prisoners, an Afghan official said Sunday.
The two Americans, identified by Western officials as U.S. Navy personnel, were last seen Friday in a dangerous part of Logar province, south of the Afghan capital. A massive ground and air search by NATO and Afghan forces was underway, with the men’s photos plastered at military checkpoints and a reward offered for information about them.
Afghan officials in Logar said the two, who were driving an armored sport-utility vehicle, may have taken a wrong turn and accidentally ended up in a Taliban-held area. NATO has not disclosed why the pair traveled to Logar after leaving their base in Kabul, or said whether the trip was authorized by their superiors.
