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KABUL : At least 25 NATO and Afghan soldiers were wounded Friday as they hunted for two US paratroopers missing in remote northwest Afghanistan, NATO said.
Local police said the casualties occurred when a search party clashed with Taliban fighters and alliance aircraft were called in to provide support, but ended up bombing their own troops.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) withheld comment on the cause of the injuries and on an Afghan police statement that the missing paratroopers had accidentally drowned.
NATO began a massive manhunt in the barren, rugged area together with Afghan forces after the two paratroopers, from the 82nd Airborne Division, went missing on Wednesday during a routine supply mission.
"During a joint operation in western Afghanistan today, initial reports indicate more than 25 ISAF and Afghan National Security Force members were wounded. Members of the joint force were searching for two missing US Army soldiers," ISAF said in a statement.
"The wounded service members were initially treated on the scene and subsequently flown to an ISAF medical facility for further treatment.
"We are committed to taking every measure possible to rescue or recover our missing service members. We continue to do everything we can to find them," the statement quoted US Navy Captain Jane Campbell as saying.
The deputy police chief of the northwestern province of Badghis, Abdul Jabar Saleh, told the missing men had drowned while trying to recover airdropped packages and that their bodies had not yet been recovered.
He said a number of NATO and Afghan personnel had died as they came up against Taliban militants during the search on Friday and alliance aircraft carried out air strikes.
"In the afternoon... during the search operation launched to find the two drowned American soldiers, a clash took place with Talibans. Then aircraft mistakenly bombed the Afghan and NATO defence lines," said the deputy police chief.
Information on casualties was unclear but at least five Afghan personnel had been killed along with NATO personnel, he said.
"We don't have an exact breakdown because helicopters came and evacuated the casualties out of the area."
A Taliban spokesman claimed the toll was far higher than the Afghan police or NATO were reporting.
"There was... a firefight between Taliban and Afghan and foreign forces in Murghab district of Badghis province. The fighting lasted for hours and was very intense, at a close distance," said the spokesman, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi.
"By the end of the day, foreign forces bombed the area where the clash was going on and due to their own bombing, 32 foreign and 43 Afghan soldiers were killed."
There are more than 100,000 troops under NATO and US command deployed to Afghanistan to fight a Taliban insurgency that is now at its deadliest in the eight years since US-led troops toppled the Islamist regime in Kabul.
US President Barack Obama is currently considering a request from his military commanders to boost troop numbers by up to 40,000, a decision that is not likely to be made public for a number of weeks yet.
The senior NATO commander in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, has warned that without more troops the war could be lost.
Nevertheless, the eight-year conflict is rapidly losing public support in Europe and the United States.
A YouGov poll in Britain showed Thursday that 57 percent of people thought British troops were not winning the conflict against Taliban insurgents, and "victory is not possible," an increase from 48 percent just two weeks ago.
Earlier Friday, ISAF said two Americans and one British soldier were killed on Thursday in separate attacks in southern Afghanistan.
Their deaths brought to 463 the number of international soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year, more than half of them Americans.
- AFP/vm
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