An American special forces soldier believed to have thrown a grenade that killed the kidnapped British aid worker Linda Norgrove in an unsuccessful rescue attempt could face disciplinary action.
It is alleged that the soldier failed to tell his commanding officers immediately that he had used a fragmentation grenade.
Miss Norgrove, 36, died on Friday night two weeks after she was kidnapped. Diplomatic sources said intelligence suggested she was at imminent risk of “being killed or being taken to Pakistan”. US special forces have since been engaged in fierce fighting in eastern Afghanistan after stepping up operations to hunt down the leadership of the group thought to have been responsible for the kidnap.
Intelligence sources have told The Daily Telegraph that several exchanges of fire have taken place in the Marawara district of Kunar province.
An interpreter was killed and eight US soldiers injured yesterday when a Chinook helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade while landing in Marawara.
The target of the US operation is Jamaat-ud-Dawa al-Quran wal’Sunnah (JDQ) — a feared al-Qaeda affiliate that held Miss Norgrove in the Korengal valley, a remote location in Kunar that has seen a jihadist resurgence since US troops left a key forward position there this summer.
JDQ operates under the command of Qari Zia-ur-Rahman, the regional Taliban chief. The group has been blamed by the International Security Assistance Force for attacks on Western troops, as well as kidnappings and bombs that have targeted civilians.
Its actions highlight a crucial problem for international efforts to open negotiations with the Taliban and break off “reconcilable” elements from those closer to al-Qaeda.
“In many areas, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are still intimately entwined,” said Bill Roggio, an analyst who closely follows the counter-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan.
Long an independent jihadist group, the JDQ formally agreed to work under the Taliban’s command structure in January this year.
Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, the Kunar al-Qaeda chief, is known to share operations, training and logistics resources with Zia-ur-Rahman’s forces.
Zia-ur-Rahman is also thought to get logistical aid from Faqir Mohammad, who commands a separate jihadist group fighting Pakistani troops across the border.
The commanders together control the Kunar-Nuristan corridor — a key mountain route used by jihadists to move personnel and war-fighting equipment into Afghanistan from Pakistan.
Local residents, who are dependent for their sustenance on smuggling timber into Pakistan through the trails along the border, often carry military equipment on their way back in return for safe passage.
US troops closed a key outpost in Korengal in April as part of a larger plan to focus on securing more heavily populated centres, leaving large swathes of Kunar under de facto jihadist rule.
(source:telegraph.co.uk)
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