Two U.S. soldiers missing, Afghan Taliban say have bodies

By Sharafuddin Sharafyar

HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - More than 25 NATO and Afghan troops were wounded during a search for two missing U.S. soldiers in western Afghanistan, the NATO-led force said on Friday.

The force gave no further details about the incident. The chief of police in Badghis province in western Afghanistan, Abdul Jabar, said NATO aircraft had struck their own troops who were searching for the two missing soldiers.

The soldiers, who had been transporting supplies, were reported missing earlier on Friday and the Taliban said they were holding the bodies of two drowned foreign soldiers.

The Islamist militants' spokesman, Qare Yousuf, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location that they had recovered the bodies of the drowned soldiers in Badghis province on Wednesday.

Jabar said the two service members were Americans, who drowned in a river after arriving in the area during a gunbattle on Wednesday.

U.S. military sources confirmed they were Americans.

Earlier the NATO-led force in Afghanistan said two of its members were reported missing during a routine resupply mission in the west of the country on Wednesday.

"We continue exhaustive search and rescue operations to locate our missing service members. We are doing everything we can to find them," said U.S. Navy Captain Jane Campbell, a press officer for the force.