5 from 82nd Airborne among dead in crash

The five U.S. soldiers killed this week in the crash of a CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter in Afghanistan were members of the 82nd Airborne Division, officials said Friday.

Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said Thursday that 30 or more service members from the 82nd Airborne had been dropped off by the Chinook shortly before it went down late Wednesday. A Briton and a Canadian were killed along with the five Americans.

U.S. military officials said Thursday that initial reports suggested the helicopter was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade, but that enemy fire was one of several possibilities.

Maj. Tom Earnhardt, a spokesman for the Fort Bragg, N.C.-based division, said Friday that investigators still don't know why the helicopter crashed.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Chinook crashed on the first day of a new joint NATO-Afghan operation to force Taliban fighters out of parts of Afghanistan's volatile Helmand Province, in the southern part of the country.

The American soldiers who were killed were part of a brigade that deployed earlier this year along with the division's commanding general and his staff.

The identities of the soldiers were not immediately released by the military.

One of the soldiers killed was 33-year-old Chief Warrant Officer Chris Allgaier, his father Bob Allgaier told the Omaha World-Herald. His wife and three children live near Fort Bragg.

Allgaier's family in Omaha, Neb., did not return phone calls Friday to The Associated Press.

Three of the division's four infantry brigades _ about 3,500 soldiers each _ are overseas, and the fourth is scheduled to leave Fort Bragg this summer, leaving only a skeleton force at the sprawling post in eastern North Carolina.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, 20 soldiers from the 82nd have died in Afghanistan, and 101 have died in Iraq.