Two U.S. service members were killed during operations against the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Thursday, the latest sign of the security challenges the Trump administration faces in America’s longest and most costly war.
Military officials said the deaths occurred during a joint U.S.-Afghan raid on Wednesday evening in Nangahar province, where a small but virulent Islamic State cell poses a threat to Afghan and U.S. coalition forces.
A third service member was wounded in the same operation, the U.S. military command in Afghanistan said in a statement. The Pentagon declined to immediately identify those killed.
“The fight against ISIS-K is important for the world, but sadly, it is not without sacrifice,” said Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, referring to the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan, known as Islamic State-Khorasan Province.
The incident took place in Nangahar’s Achin district near a site where the U.S. military unleashed a massive 22,000-pound bomb this month, a sign of the scale of the ongoing conflict nearly 16 years after U.S. troops arrived in Afghanistan.
The recent fighting in Achin, including the first-ever use of the GBU-43 bomb and Wednesday’s incident, which killed two Americans, illustrates the danger posed by just one of multiple militant groups in a conflict that U.S. officials have described as a stalemate.
A Taliban resurgence across Afghanistan has meant that the government in Kabul controls only slightly more than half the country’s territory, according to a U.S. government watchdog, and that the United States has been forced to return forces to areas pacified at great cost under President Barack Obama’s 2009-2011 troop surge.
At the same time, local forces are struggling to contain an array of militant groups along the country’s border with Pakistan, including the Islamic State.
Faced with those challenges, the Trump administration is re-evaluating its strategy for Afghanistan and considering sending additional U.S. troops to support local forces. Nicholson has called for thousands of extra service members to help train and support the Afghan military.
According to Navy Lt. Chris Donlon, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Wednesday’s incident happened close to Achin and near where U.S. aircraft dropped the GBU-43 munition two weeks ago.
That bomb targeted a sprawling Islamic State tunnel complex, and although Afghan officials said between 36 and about 100 Islamic State fighters were killed in the strike, the U.S. military has not announced what exactly the bomb accomplished.
The Afghan branch of the Islamic State, mainly composed of militants pulled from other groups, has emerged as an increasing counterterrorism focus for United States in Afghanistan.
