An American service member was killed in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, the second U.S. military death in Afghanistan in less than a week. Officials said the service member died of a wound sustained in a combat operation.
The service member's identity was being withheld pending notification of family members. The military said one Afghan security force member also was killed and several were wounded in Thursday's incident.
Thursday's death marked the fourth American service member to be killed in Afghanistan this year. On Jan. 1, Army Sgt. 1st Class Mihail Golin, 34, of Fort Lee, New Jersey, was killed in fighting in Nangarhar province, and on April 30, Army Spc. Gabriel D. Conde, 22, of Loveland, Colorado, was killed in Kapisa province.
On Saturday, Army Cpl. Joseph Maciel, of South Gate, California, was killed .
US president Donald Trump introduced a more aggressive strategy in Afghanistan last August, including a surge in airstrikes.
After becoming president in 2008, Barack Obama, a Democrat, vowed to end the Afghan war -- one of the longest conflicts in US history – but he failed to keep his promise.
Trump, has spoken against the Afghan war, and has dubbed the 2001 invasion and following occupation of Afghanistan as "Obama's war". But he has also announced deployment of thousands more US forces to the war-torn country, signaling a policy shift.
Back in 2014, the US-led occupying forces in Afghanistan officially announced the end of their combat operations in the country, saying they now had a mission to “train, advise, and assist” Afghan troops.
However, the Trump administration last year permitted the deployment of an additional 3,000 troops to Afghanistan, where the US already has 11,000 forces.
