US Afghan rescue team missing

A small team of US soldiers was missing in the same mountains in eastern Afghanistan where a Special Forces helicopter was shot down earlier this week, a US military spokesman said today.

The MH-47 Chinook helicopter, carrying 16 soldiers, all of whom died in the crash, had gone into the mountains on Tuesday to ‘‘extract the soldiers’’. The ground team has been missing ever since the chopper was downed, US military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara said.

Meanwhile, a purported Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, claimed rebels had captured a US soldier near the town of Asadabad, close to the Pakistan border.