KABUL, Afghanistan -- Three U.S. service members were killed Tuesday when a roadside bomb detonated next to their vehicle in a police convoy, U.S. military officials said. It was the worst loss of life in Afghanistan for the United States this year.
The attack took place near Ghazni city in the southeastern province of the same name. The area has remained unstable since Taliban forces overran it in August in a four-day siege that left more than 100 people dead and parts of the city in ruins.
Three other U.S. service members were wounded in the attack, along with a U.S. military contractor, military officials added. The survivors were evacuated from the area and are receiving medical attention. The names of the dead and the injured were not immediately released.
"The convoy set off a roadside mine, and there was smoke all over the place. It nearly took our lives, too," said a witness, Haji Abdulamin, a local resident. "The road was blocked, and a few minutes later helicopters landed and took the dead."
Separately, the military said Tuesday that a preliminary review has found that an Afghan commando likely accidentally shot a U.S. Army Ranger on Saturday during a raid on a compound in a remote southwestern part of the country. Sgt. Leandro A.S. Jasso, a 25-year-old Army Ranger from Washington state, died later that day.
The operation was somewhat unusual because, the coalition said, it came against al-Qaida militants, the first time in recent years that the presence of al-Qaida was reported in that part of the country. The Islamic State extremist group is more typically targeted, as it now controls about half of Afghanistan.
Gen. Abdul Raqib Mubariz, the Nimroz province police chief, had described the insurgents in the fight with the Americans as Taliban, and added that 22 militants were killed.
"It is not confirmed yet if they had any affiliation with al-Qaida," he said.
Taliban insurgents have maintained that they are no longer allied with remnants of al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida's numbers were believed to be very low, although insurgents from the separate Islamic State group have grown in numbers lately.
The coalition first identified Jasso on Sunday, but had not previously acknowledged the possibility of friendly fire. He was evacuated from the compound, and later died at a military hospital at Camp Dwyer, a coalition installation in neighboring Helmand province.
Combined, the deaths bring the number of U.S. troops killed in combat in Afghanistan this year to 13. Five of those deaths occurred this month.
Senior U.S. military officials have sought to reassure Afghan forces. The top U.S. officer in the country, Army Gen. Austin "Scott" Miller, took the unusual step of carrying a rifle in the city last week. More typically, a general carries a pistol.
Earlier in the month, Army Maj. Brent Taylor was shot dead in an insider attack in Kabul. Taylor was the mayor of Ogden, Utah, and a member of the Utah Army National Guard.
About 15,000 U.S. troops are deployed to Afghanistan, with most involved in Resolute Support, a U.S.-led NATO mission to train, advise and assist Afghan forces battling the Taliban. A separate counterterrorism mission known as Freedom's Sentinel also is underway, with U.S. Special Operations troops often partnering with Afghan commandos.
The total number of U.S. military casualties during the 17-year Afghan war is more than 2,400. The majority of U.S. forces withdrew by the end of 2014, but those still in the country are involved in supporting combat situations.
While U.S. and coalition casualties in Afghanistan have dropped sharply over the past several years, Afghan security force casualties have risen dramatically. Figures released by President Ashraf Ghani show that about 25 Afghan soldiers or police officers are killed every day.
Information for this article was contributed by Pamela Constable and Dan Lamothe of The Washington Post; by Nesar Azadzoi and Rod Nordland of The New York Times; and by Amir Shah of The Associated Press.
A Section on 11/28/2018