e-Paich area about 30 km (19 miles) northwest of Asadabad. He said he had no information about U.S. troops being captured. Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry O'Hara, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, said work at the crash site had been hampered by the presence of militants in the area, cloudy weather and heavily wooded terrain. In early June, the U.S. military said a helicopter had been attacked in Uruzgan province by a suspected surface-to-air missile. Such weapons, then supplied by the United States, were used to great effect by guerrillas fighting Soviet occupiers in the 1980s but the Taliban have not been known to use them. It was the second crash of a U.S. Chinook in Afghanistan in less than three months and came amid a surge in guerrilla activity aimed at derailing Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, the next big step in Afghanistan's difficult path to stability. --More 2254 Local Time 1954 GMT
