Two U.S. service members were killed on Friday, March 22 in Afghanistan, NATO’s Resolute Support mission said without providing details.
The two service members were conducting an operation in an unspecified part of the country.
Update, March 25: The Defense Department over the weekend named the two soldiers as Spc. Joseph P. Collette, 29, of the 242nd Ordnance Battalion, 71st Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group, and Sgt. 1st Class Will D. Lindsay, 33, assigned to 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne). Both were based in Fort Carson, Colorado.
Collette and Lindsay died “as a result of wounds sustained while engaged in combat operations” in Kunduz province, the Pentagon said.
Collette joined the Army in 2012 and deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in December as an explosive ordinance disposal specialist.
Lindsay enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2004 and had previously deployed to Iraq, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Loren Bymer said. He had four daughters.
Both Collette and Lindsay had previously been awarded Purple Heart medals.
Their deaths come three months to the day after a Special Forces member, Staff Sergeant Joshua Z. Beale, was killed in Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan.
Beale, 32, died on January 22 as a result of injuries sustained from enemy small arms fire during combat operations in Tarin Kowt.
On January 17, 26-year-old Sergreant Cameron A. Meddock died in a military hospital Landstuhl, Germany, as a result of injuries sustained from small arms fire during combat operations on January 13 in the Jawand District of Badghis Province.
Fourteen U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan last year, including three who were killed in November by an improvised explosive device in the Andar district of Ghazni province and a fourth who later died from his injuries. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, with its spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid tweeting that the militants targeted the U.S. “invaders.”
This story was updated on March 25, 2019 with the identities of the two soldiers killed.
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