- (AFP) -- US special forces, whose superman image has
created an aura in invulnerability around them, have unexpectedly disclosed
heavy casualties - 175 killed, wounded or missing - in their worldwide
hunt for Osama bin Laden and his terror associates.
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- Addressing a congressional panel today, Deputy Assistant
Defence Secretary Marshall Billingslea said the figure had amassed since
the beginning of a concerted post-September 11 counter-terrorism drive
aimed at bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
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- "To date, there have been 137 SOF wounded, 91 of
whom sustained injuries during combat," Billingslea told the House
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities.
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- "Thirty eight SOF have been killed in the course
of Operation Enduring Freedom and related counter-terror operations."
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- The latest losses came in Afghanistan, where two US special
forces troops were killed and one was wounded on Saturday, when their four-vehicle
reconnaissance patrol was ambushed in the vicinity of the south-western
city of Geresk, according to the US Central Command.
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- US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented a slightly
different version of the event, saying late Sunday that the two soldiers
"were lost by being ambushed while they were inspecting a school and
a hospital, both being built with American funding".
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- A total of 64 members of a broad international coalition
taking part in Operation Enduring Freedom launched in October 2001 to rid
Afghanistan of al-Qaeda operatives and their Taliban protectors have been
officially reported dead.
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- However, a defence official ruled out the possibility
that some of the casualties, even among the secretive special forces, have
remained undisclosed.
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- "There is no hiding of casualties at the Department
of Defence," said the official, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity,
adding that no combat deaths incurred during operations Enduring Freedom
or Iraqi Freedom had remained undisclosed.
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