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TTwo soldiers were killed Friday in Afghanistan in an incident for which the Taliban are demanding credit.
The Ministry of Defense announced Saturday that Spc. Joseph P. Collette and Sgt. 1st Class Will D. Lindsay died in Kunduz Province of injuries he suffered during fights during Operation Freedom & # 39; s Sentinel, the US counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan.
The military says the incident, for which the Taliban have claimed credit, is still under investigation.
Both soldiers were based in Fort Carson, Colorado.
Collette, 29, was originally from Lancaster, Ohio, and had been assigned to the 242nd Artillery Battalion of the 71st Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group.
Lindsay, 33, was from Cortez, Colorado, and posted to 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Task Force (Airborne).
Collette joined the Army in 2010 and was a specialist in the disposal of explosive ordnance. His deployment to Afghanistan began in December 2018 and he had already received a Purple Heart during his deployment.
Collette's wife, Caela Marie Collette, told Stars & Stripes that she and Collette were recently married: "We did not have all our ceremony yet because we did not have the time. We were married less than a month before her deployment, and when she returned in June, we went to Florida to hold a ceremony. "
She said that Collette had been motivated to join the army because of the September 11 terrorist attacks and wanted to deploy before leaving the army in 2020. "He was leaving the army in February of the same year. Next year and had never been deployed, "she said. he said. He wanted to go to the evil deployment. "
After his assassination Friday, Collette's wife called him "my best friend" in a Facebook message about his death. "I'm so lost without him now," she wrote.
Lindsay, a green beret, had joined the army in 2004 and had served in the 10th Special Forces Group (airborne) for 13 years.
The US Special Operations Command stated that Lindsay had been deployed to Iraqi operations five times in Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn operations and to Tajikistan in 2016 as part of a mission to combat drug trafficking. of his recent deployment in Afghanistan.
During his many deployments, he received four bronze stars and a purple heart.
Colonel Lawrence Ferguson, commander of the 10th special forces group (airborne), praised Lindsay's service: "Will was one of the best of our training."
Lindsay leaves a wife and four girls.
Newsweek reported that other US soldiers had been wounded in the fighting, including a stable-state Special Forces soldier who will be evacuated to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Two other members of the US Armed Forces were also injured in the fire and are expected to recover.
Qayum Nuristani, a spokesman for the Afghan special forces, told the New York Times that an Afghan commando had also been killed in the fighting and that three other Afghan soldiers had been wounded. He also said that many Taliban were also killed during the battle.
Collette and Lindsay are the third and fourth members of the American service killed in Afghanistan in 2019.
Since the start of combat operations in October 2001, following the September 11 terrorist attacks, more than 2,400 members of the US military have been killed and more than 20,000 injured in Afghanistan.
About 14,000 soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan to help train the Afghan armed forces. The United States is also conducting counter-insurgency and counterterrorism actions against the Taliban, al-Qaida, the Islamic State and other terrorist elements who have found a safe haven in the country.
The US government, headed by US Special Representative for Reconciliation in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been negotiating for months with Taliban representatives in Qatar.
Khalilzad says the US and the Taliban have tentatively agreed on two aspects: a timetable for US withdrawal and Taliban guarantees that foreign terrorists would not be welcome. Many people are skeptical of the Taliban's confidence in following through on its assurances.
The Afghan government was excluded from these talks at the request of the Taliban, which greatly frustrated them.
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