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Officials say there were no casualties in incident involving Chinook, which Taliban claims to have shot down A Nato helicopter has made a “hard landing” in east Afghanistan on Monday but there were no apparent casualties, officials said. The incident occurred in the volatile Paktia province, and comes days after a Chinook helicopter crashed on Friday killed 38 troops – the largest single loss for foreign forces in 10 years. International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokesman Lieutenant Colonel David Doherty confirmed there were no casualties in Monday’s incident. An investigation was under way but it appeared there was no enemy activity in the area at the time. However, a Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed in a text message to Reuters that the group had shot down the helicopter, also a Chinook, in the Zurmat district of Paktia, and that 33 American soldiers had died. The Taliban often exaggerates, although it correctly identified the number killed in Friday’s Chinook crash in Wardak. The surge of military deaths is being matched by record casualties among civilians, who continue to bear the brunt of a war that started almost 10 years ago. On Monday, 300 Afghans took to the streets in Ghazni province carrying the bodies of two people they claimed had been killed during a raid by ISAF troops. The provincial deputy police chief, Mohammad Hussain, said the bodies have not yet been identified. Civilian deaths caused by fighting between foreign troops and insurgents have been a major source of friction between the government in Kabul and its western backers for some time. UN figures show those casualties hit record levels in the first six months of 2011, although it blamed 80% of them on insurgents. Another ISAF spokesman, Captain Pietro D’Angelo, said two insurgents had been killed after a patrol came under attack. “There are no reports of civilians harmed during this operation,” he added. Nato officials are still investigating the cause of a helicopter crash on Friday that killed 38 people , including 30 US soldiers, seven Afghans and an interpreter. The majority of those killed were from Navy Seal Team 6, the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, but are not the same personnel. The Taliban claim to have shot down that troop-carrying CH-47 Chinook in Maidan, Wardak province, and a US official in Washington, who asked not to be identified, also said the helicopter was believed to have been shot down. “We’re still not aware of the cause of the incident, this is a very vital part of the investigation,” Brigadier General Carsten Jacobsen, senior spokesman of the Nato-led ISAF, told a news conference. “The area in which the helicopter was operating was known to be not free of insurgents.” Meanwhile, at least another seven ISAF troops were killed over the weekend, four of whom in two separate attacks on Sunday, including two French legionnaires. The spike in casualties – at least 383 foreign troops have been killed so far this year, almost 50 of them in the first week of August – comes at a time of growing unease about the increasingly unpopular and costly war. US and Nato officials issued statements vowing to “stay the course” in Afghanistan after Friday’s Chinook, but the recent death toll will raise questions about how much longer foreign troops should stay in Afghanistan. The deaths came barely two weeks after foreign troops began the first phase of a gradual process to hand security responsibility over to Afghan soldiers and police. That process is due to end with the last foreign combat troops leaving at the end of 2014, but some US lawmakers are already questioning whether that timetable is fast enough. Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, issued a statement on Sunday saying that enemies of Afghanistan, such as the Taliban and other insurgents, wanted to disrupt the transition process. UN figures show that 1,462 Afghan civilians were killed in conflict-related incidents during the first six months of 2011, the deadliest period for civilians since the Taliban were toppled by US-backed Afghan forces in late 2001. Foreign military deaths also hit record levels in 2010 with 711 killed. Afghanistan Taliban Nato Hamid Karzai United States guardian.co.uk