Posted on: Sunday, July 3, 2005
3 Pearl SEALs among 16 bodies returned to U.S.
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Advertiser Staff and News Services
A transport plane flew home the bodies of 16 U.S. troops — eight Navy SEALs and eight Army soldiers — killed when their helicopter was shot down during a rescue mission in the mountains of Afghanistan.
The military said yesterday that three of the SEALs were based at Pearl Harbor:
• Petty Officer 2nd Class James Suh, 28, of Deerfield Beach, Fla.; • Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric S. Patton, 22, of Boulder City, Nev.; • Senior Chief Petty Officer Dan Healy, 36. They were members of SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One at Pearl Harbor, the Navy said.
Sixteen flag-draped caskets were loaded onto a C-17 transport plane during an "emotional ceremony" Friday night and flown to Dover, Del., military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said in Afghanistan.
The Advertiser had earlier reported the deaths of Patton and Healy, and ran their biographies yesterday.
Suh joined the Navy in 2001 and arrived in Hawai'i in 2003. He joined Team One that December.
Records indicate that Suh, who was single, purchased a two-bedroom condominium in Waipahu in May 2003. Little other information on him was available.
The military was unable to immediately furnish his photograph, and Suh's family in Florida made no statement.
The 16 died Tuesday while trying to rescue four SEALs trapped in eastern Afghan mountains near the Pakistani border. The search continues for those SEALs.
It was unclear if there were any casualties from a Friday air strike of a suspected Taliban compound in mountains near Asadabad town, Kunar province, close to the Pakistani border. That was near the area where the U.S. team was last heard from last week.
O'Hara said a "battle damage assessment is ongoing."
"We conducted an air strike on a target we deemed we had to hit immediately. The target was an enemy compound in Kunar province," he said. "The bombing was done using precision guided munitions. The target objective was intelligence driven."
O'Hara would not say whether the air strike was directly related to the missing military team.
Violence elsewhere left 38 rebels and Afghan security forces dead as fighting rose ahead of fall elections.
A purported Taliban spokes-man, Mullah Latif Hakimi, claimed Friday that militants had captured one of the men and said he was a "high-ranking American" caught in the same area as where the helicopter went down. He reiterated the claim yesterday in a phone call with The Associated Press.
"The soldier is being held in Kunar. Taliban leaders will decide what to do with him," Hakimi said. "He is being kept in a home. His health is all right."
When asked to provide evidence that the soldier was in captivity, he said, "Tomorrow we will give proof."
Hakimi, who also claimed insurgents shot down the helicopter, often calls news organizations to take responsibility for attacks, and the information frequently proves exaggerated or untrue. His exact tie to the Taliban leadership is unclear.
Reacting to the claim, O'Hara said there was no evidence indicating that any of the troops had been taken into captivity.
He said U.S. forces were using all their resources to search for the missing men. The troops are a small team from the special operations forces, military officials said.
The downed Chinook helicopter had been trying to extract the troops when it went into the mountains.
"All our hopes are that we find our missing service members. On top of those hopes are actions on the ground looking for them," O'Hara said. "It's a very demanding area: Very mountainous, very wooded and the likelihood of enemy contact is probable."
The loss of the 16 was the deadliest single blow to American forces who ousted the Taliban in 2001 and are now fighting the escalating insurgency.
In three months of unprecedented fighting, about 502 suspected insurgents, 57 Afghan police and soldiers, 45 U.S. casualties and 134 civilians have been killed. Only eight months ago, Afghan and U.S. officials were hailing a relatively peaceful presidential election as a sign that the Taliban rebellion was finished.
In the latest fighting, 25 rebels and six Afghan soldiers were killed in a raid on a mountainous Taliban hideout in central Uruzgan province, Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan said.
U.S. and Afghan forces killed three rebels after coming under attack twice near the southern city of Kandahar, the U.S. military said.
Advertiser Staff Writer John Windrow and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
