4 Troops Killed in Afghan Helo Crash

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A military helicopter crashed during an early morning operation in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing three Australian commandoes and an American servicemember, officials said.
Two other international service members were killed Sunday in separate bombings in the south, NATO announced without specifying nationalities. One of them was an American, according to a U.S. spokesman, Col. Wayne Shanks.
The crash was being investigated but there were no indications of enemy involvement, NATO said in a statement.
The Australian government said three of the dead were Australians, and U.S. Lt. Col. Joseph T. Breasseale said the fourth servicemember killed was American.

Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said seven other Australian soldiers were wounded, two of them badly.
This is a tragic day for Australia, and for the Australian defense force," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a statement to Parliament. "We know our mission in Afghanistan is hard, but this mission is critical for our common security." There were 15 people aboard the helicopter, 10 of them Australians, according to Australian Defense Minister John Faulkner.
The crash comes in a particularly deadly month for NATO forces. With the most recent deaths, at least 59 international troops, including 36 Americans, have died so far in June. That puts June among the deadliest months for international forces in the nearly nine-year war. The deadliest month so far for the military alliance was July 2009 when 75 troops, including 44 Americans, were killed.
The rising death toll underscores the precarious situation for Afghanistan's international allies as violence has ramped up this summer.
The United Nations plans to pull some of its approximately 1,000 foreign staffers from the country in the next three months, according to a U.N. report issued last week. The world body has been facing recruitment and housing problems since it tightened security for staffers in the wake of an attack on a residential hotel in Kabul in October where U.N. election staffers were staying. Five U.N. employees died in the attack.
The goal, according to the report, is to reduce the number of U.N. staff in Afghanistan as much as possible without compromising the effectiveness of the mission.
Dan McNorton, a U.N. spokesman in Afghanistan, said that only support staff would be relocated. He would not give a figure on how many people will be moved, saying only that it was "a few" or "a small number."
The helicopter crashed before dawn in southern Kandahar province, and the operation it had been part of was still ongoing, Houston said.
Other coalition helicopters that were part of the same push landed near the downed aircraft and airlifted out the wounded, he said. More details on the operation were not given.
NATO has launched a major operation to secure the biggest southern city, Kandahar, capital of the province where the Taliban were first organized in the 1990s.
Australia has some 1,500 troops in Afghanistan alongside NATO forces. Monday's deaths take Australia's military death toll in Afghanistan to 16.
Australia's 1,550 troops in Afghanistan are based mainly in Uruzgan province, and are mostly involved in training Afghan security forces.