It was payback time in Afghanistan:
An air strike by NATO-led forces in Afghanistan killed Taliban fighters, including a local leader, who were responsible for a weekend helicopter crash that killed 38 troops, the worst single incident in 10 years of war.
“The strike killed Taliban leader Mullah Mohibullah and the insurgent who fired the shot associated with the August 6 downing of the CH-47 helicopter, which resulted in the deaths of 38 Afghan and coalition service members,” the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.
The statement did not say explicitly that the Taliban fighters had shot the helicopter down, although it was the clearest indication yet that was the likely cause.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan also announced the same news.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.