KABUL: Two US service members were killed during an operation against Daesh militants in eastern Afghanistan overnight on Wednesday, US officials said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump's administration looks to craft a strategy in the war-torn country. Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis on April 27 said the soldiers were killed during an operation on April 26 against ISIS Khorasan, an IS affiliate that operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As my colleague Krishnadev Calamur reported, ISIS is a relative newcomer to Afghanistan, with U.S. estimates putting the group’s numbers at around 700 fighters (though Afghan officials say it’s closer to 1,500). CNN cited a U.S. official as saying the two soldiers killed on April 26 were members of the U.S. Special Forces and that another soldier had been wounded during the fighting in Nangarhar's southern district of Achin. U.S. troops are battling suspected Islamic State fighting in Nangarhar province, near the border with Pakistan, where earlier this month the United States dropped a massive bomb known as "the mother of all bombs." "The fight against ISIS-K is important for the world but, sadly, it is not without sacrifice,” Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, said.
Two U.S. service members are killed and a third is injured during a raid against ISIL militants in Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province.