The two crew members of a U.S. Air Force fighter jet died when the plane crashed in eastern Afghanistan early Saturday, a military source told CNN.
The two-man F-15 Eagle went down while it was conducting military operations, another source, Lt. Col. Reid Christopherson, said earlier. “At this time, we are very comfortable in stating there was no hostile fire in the incident,” Christopherson said. He added that a board of officers will investigate the crash of the highly maneuverable, all-weather tactical fighter. A spokesman for the governor of Afghanistan’s central Ghazni province, who goes by the single name Jihangir, confirmed that a U.S. plane crashed in Ghazni’s Nawur district before dawn. “The crash site was sealed off by coalition forces,” Jihangir told CNN by telephone. “Afghan police were not allowed to have access to this area.” The Afghan official said the plane crashed about 100 miles west of the town of Ghazni, between the communities of Qaracha and Bahari. The jet crash comes in a bloody month in Afghanistan. July’s toll of international military fatalities stands at 50, the highest monthly tally since the war began in October 2001, a CNN count of official statistics shows.
