Elite SEAL team on road to recovery after devastating attack

CREATED Aug. 8, 2011

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  • The elite team of Navy SEALS is figuring out how they will recover after losing seven percent of their people in the helicopter crash over the weekend. Video by ktnv.com

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KABUL, Afghanistan-- The bodies of the 30 Americans killed in Afghanistan over the weekend have now been recovered. But how will the U.S. military recover from the blow to the elite SEAL Team Six?

The helicopter crash claimed the lives of 38 people, 30 of whom were Americans, 22 of them elite Navy SEALs.

Seal Team Six is a small, highly trained group of special operations forces. When their Chinook helicopter was shot down, roughly seven percent of that group was lost.

Military advisors say that is devastating, but if anything, it will probably build the resolve of the troops that remain who are continuing to seek out Taliban fighters in the area where the helicopter was shot down. 

When surge troops arrived a few years ago, they started to get control of the Wardak province. But the area is still full of insurgents, and as we learned this weekend, they can be dangerous. 

Two U.S. officials say when the attack happened, the American troops had just completed a rescue mission to help a U.S. Army Ranger unit that was under fire.

They were leaving in their Chinook when the aircraft was apparently hit by insurgent fire. All on board were killed, making it the deadliest single loss for U.S. forces in the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

NATO began an operation on Monday to recover the remains of the large transport helicopter, while Afghan and American forces battled insurgents in the region of the crash.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, NATO said insurgents killed four alliance service members in two separate attacks in the east and the south. It did not provide their nationalities or any other details.