WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. soldier was killed in combat mission in Afghanistan on Tuesday, a statement by the U.S. Department of Defense said, without disclosing the name of the soldier.
"In accordance with U.S. Department of Defense policy, the name of the service member killed in action is being withheld until 24 hours after notification of next of kin is complete," the Pentagon said in the statement.
It is the second incident in 2019 in which a U.S. service member was killed in military operations in Afghanistan. U.S. Army Sergeant Cameron Meddock died Thursday in Landstuhl, Germany, of injuries sustained from a small arms fire on Jan. 13 in Badghis Province, Afghanistan.
The United States maintained some 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, largely providing training missions to local Afghan forces while also conducting counterterrorism operations against terror groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
A suicide attacker of the Taliban on Monday morning rammed a hijacked military vehicle loaded with explosives into an Afghan Special Forces' station in Maidan Shar, capital of eastern Wardak Province, killing at least 32 people and wounding more than 70 security personnel.
The U.S. administration ordered the military to shave about half the size of its presence in Afghanistan in December, when President Donald Trump also announced a controversial plan to pull the U.S. troops out of Syria, causing a resurgence of violence that saw four Americans killed last week in a suicide explosion in Manbij, a town in northern Syria controlled by a militia partnering with U.S.-backed Kurdish forces.
