First Publicly Acknowledged U.S. War Death

15/05/2001| IslamWeb

WASHINGTON (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Rioting prisoners killed CIA officer Johnny ``Mike'' Spann at Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, the agency said Wednesday. He was the first American killed in action inside the country since U.S. bombing began seven weeks earlier.
Officials recovered his body from the prison compound Wednesday, only after northern alliance rebels backed by U.S. airstrikes and special forces quelled an uprising by Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners. (Read photo caption below)
Spann, at the compound to interrogate prisoners, was caught inside when the riot began and had been missing since Sunday. The CIA provided few details of the circumstances of his death.
Spann had been in Afghanistan for about six weeks, said his father, Johnny Spann, during an afternoon news conference in the family's hometown of Winfield, Ala.
Four other Americans, all military personnel, have been killed in connection with the fighting in Afghanistan. All died in accidents outside the country, two in a helicopter crash in Pakistan.
The CIA has been running covert operations in Afghanistan alongside the more public military effort. CIA officers are believed to have been providing weapons, money and intelligence to rebel groups opposing the Taliban and al-Qaida, as well as interrogating prisoners captured during the fighting.
The prison riot began Sunday when hundreds of Arabs, Pakistanis and other non-Afghan prisoners captured after the fall of Kunduz, the Taliban's last stronghold in the north, broke free and stormed an armory for weapons.
Thousands of northern alliance fighters, aided by U.S. commandos and airstrikes, assaulted the compound, but the prisoners held out for days before the fortress was recaptured on Wednesday. Hundreds of prisoners and dozens of alliance fighters were dead.
Five U.S. soldiers were wounded Monday when a U.S. bomb went astray. They were evacuated to a U.S. military hospital in Germany, where one is in intensive care and the other four were in good condition.
PHOTO CAPTION:
A Northern alliance fighter kicks a body as he walks across the yard covered with bodies of pro-Taliban forces in a fortress prison near Mazar-e-Sharif, northern Afghanistan, Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2001. Several hundred pro-Taliban prisoners captured part of the fortress prison Sunday, and were defeated in three days of fighting which involved British and U.S. special forces. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)