WASHINGTON – Army commando Sgt. Nathan Ross Chapman, the first U.S. military casualty in Afghanistan from hostile fire, may have been killed by a 14-year-old boy in an ambush staged by supposedly friendly tribesmen, it was revealed yesterday.
Afghan tribal fighters in the Khost region, near the Pakistan border, say they are searching for the terror teen, whom they did not identify. He is now on the run after coming under suspicion for last week’s shooting of Chapman and a CIA operative, who was badly wounded.
Tribal elders in the region were prepared to convene a jirga, or council, to decide whether to hand the boy over to U.S. military authorities yesterday, but had to postpone the session because he had vanished, Reuters reported.
Javed Marwat, a Pakistani border official, told reporters the boy might be in Pakistan.
“The Afghan authorities told me the boy, who was [barely] a teenager, was arrested for firing at the U.S. soldiers with a Kalashnikov rifle. The boy was injured in an exchange of gunfire, but he managed to escape,” Marwat said.
Chapman, 31, of San Antonio was part of a 25-member team sent to the eastern Paktia province to coordinate with local warlords on U.S. military efforts to track down al Qaeda fighters fleeing from the battle of Tora Bora into the province.
The team was ambushed Friday, and Chapman died of wounds from “small-arms fire.”
The rest of the U.S. team was evacuated in helicopters by a rapid-response team answering a radioed distress signal.
At the Pentagon, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told reporters that an investigation is still ongoing into the circumstances of Chapman’s death.
“It most definitely was an ambush,” Stufflebeem said.
“This [Chapman’s presence in the area] was something that was anticipated and so, in some regard, set up.”
Other Pentagon officials told The Post they strongly suspect Chapman’s team was “set up” by local warlords in the area who may be secretly supporting the Taliban and al Qaeda while pretending to be loyal to the interim Afghan government.
U.S. officials believe there were several people involved in the ambush, and added that there is nothing particularly remarkable about a 14-year-old being part of the hit team because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of child and teenage soldiers in Afghanistan.
The killer’s age also didn’t matter to Chapman’s parents.
“Whether it’s a 14-year-old or a 41-year-old, our son is still dead,” Wilbur Chapman told CNN’s Larry King last night. “It makes no difference to me.”
Chapman was a veteran of U.S. military operations in Panama, the Persian Gulf and Haiti. His body is to be flown today to his base, Fort Lewis in Washington state.