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Two U.S. soldiers were injured after their Black hawk helicopter made a hard landing early Tuesday.

The crew members suffered minor injuries when their copter crash landed in the Achin District in eastern Afghanistan as a result of a mechanical issue, according to a statement released by NATO.

A U.S. HH-60 Black Hawk suffered a mechanical issue that resulted in a hard landing during operations near Achin, Nangarhar early this morning, The NATO-led Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan said in a statement. Rescue personnel safely recovered the crew. Two crew members suffered minor injuries in the landing and are receiving treatment at a coalition medical facility.

The aircraft is being recovered and the incident is under investigation.

The Taliban in a statement claimed they opened fire on the helicopter, killing everyone on board. The insurgents routinely exaggerate their gains and casualties they inflict in battle.

The Achin District is the home to hundreds of militants from ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, the Islamic States Afghanistan affiliate. They are the same extremist group that claimed responsibility for the attack on the Iraqi Embassy in Kabul on Monday.

The region is where American troops are supporting Afghan security forces in a campaign against the ISIS affiliate.

This past April, two U.S. Army Rangers were killed kight ISIS in Achin, just weeks after the U.S. Military dropped the Mother of all Bombs, or MOAB on an ISIS cave complex.

Lucas Tomlinson is the Pentagon and State Department producer for Fox News Channel. You can follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews

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Black Hawk Down: NATO helicopter has hard landing in Afghanistan; 2 injured - Fox News

By: Express Web Desk | Updated: August 1, 2017 3:38 pm Live cricket score, India A vs Afghanistan: India A are batting first in Pretoria. (Source: Screenshot)

India A started their tri-series in South Africa with a loss against South Africa A by two wickets. But they came to win the next one against Afghanistan A replacement for Australia A who abandoned the tour due to the on-going pay dispute. With that, India A sit second in the points table behind South Africa A who have won both their games. The third match for India A, captained by Manish Pandey, gives the visiting team a chance at building pressure at the top of the table. The teams who will finish as the top-two will go on to play the final at Proteria next week. Catch live scores and updates here.

India A vs Afghanistan A, Live Scores and Updates from Pretoria: Manish Pandey-captained India A are looking for their second win on the trot.

TEAMS:

India A:Shreyas Iyer, Karun Nair, Manish Pandey (c), Rishabh Pant (wk), Vijay Shankar, Deepak Hooda, Krunal Pandya, Axar Patel, Basil Thampi, Mohammed Siraj, Siddarth Kaul

Afghanistan A:Javed Ahmadi, Shafiqullah Shafiq (c & wk), Rahmat Shah, Nasir Jamal, Ihsanullah Janat, Najibullah Zadran, Younas Ahmadzai, Fareed Ahmad, Nawaz Khan, Mohammad Ibrahim, Sharafuddin Ashraf

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India A vs Afghanistan A, Live Cricket Score: India A steadied by captain Manish Pandey against Afghanistan A - The Indian Express

Security forces respond at the site of an attack on the Iraqi Embassy in Kabul. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility. Massoud Hossaini/AP hide caption

Security forces respond at the site of an attack on the Iraqi Embassy in Kabul. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

Attackers in the Afghan capital attempted to storm the Iraqi Embassy on Monday, setting off a bomb before gunmen rushed the compound's gate. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

NPR's Diaa Hadid, reporting from Islamabad, says the attack is likely in retaliation for Iraqi security forces routing ISIS fighters from their stronghold in Mosul, Iraq.

"The group is trying to assert itself through violent attacks to show its followers that it still has power, despite losing important battles in Iraq and Syria," she says.

Conflicting reports said the number of attackers was either three or four. Some reports said the initial blast was from a car bomb, others said one of the attackers, apparently wearing a suicide vest, detonated it, to begin the assault. Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish put the number of attackers at three.

Witnesses reported several explosions following the initial blast and black smoke rising from the embassy building. The gun battle reportedly lasted four hours.

"Our forces are inside and a clearance operation is underway," Danish told The Associated Press, adding that embassy personnel were safe, although embassy guards and nearby civilians might have suffered casualties.

The Foreign Ministry in Baghdad says Iraq's charge d'affaires in Afghanistan was rescued from the gunbattle and taken to the Egyptian Embassy. Two other Iraqi staffers were reportedly being evacuated from the building, according to Reuters.

The AP quotes one witness, a store owner who goes by the name of Hafizullah, as saying that he saw the bodies of two policemen on the ground before armored personnel carriers and police arrived to cordon off the area.

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ISIS Claims Responsibility For Attack On Iraqi Embassy In Afghanistan - NPR

West Indies and Afghanistan players pose for a photograph after the third ODI was washed out

Afghanistan are closing in on playing their maiden Test, and are in talks with Zimbabwe for a full series later this year. The series is likely to be hosted by the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB). Afghanistan were conferred Test status by the ICC in June earlier this year.

ESPNcricinfo understands the series is likely to comprise one Test, five ODIs and between two to three T20Is. With Afghanistan not in a position to host cricket at home, the ACB is looking at hosting the series either in India or the UAE.

It is understood that Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) sent an e-mail to the ACB last week giving an in-principle nod. Both boards will take a final decision once ZC finalises the dates of the scheduled tri-series in Bangladesh, which, as per the ICC Future Tours Programme (FTP), is to be played between January-February next year. Ideally, ZC wants to play Afghanistan in the UAE and then travel to Bangladesh.

If the plans materialize, it will give Afghanistan a significant boost, after they have hopped into the top echelons of international cricket since gaining ODI status in 2009.

During this period, Afghanistan registered memorable results, including three consecutive limited-overs series victories against Zimbabwe before recently drawing the ODI series in West Indies in June.

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Afghanistan closer to maiden Test, in talks with Zimbabwe for full series - ESPN

The New York Times reported on July 25, 2017 that U.S. advisors and Afghan officials are trying to use Afghanistans mineral wealth potentialonce estimated at $1 trillionto sell President Donald Trump on a war he understandably has little enthusiasm for.

This new sales strategy is dangerous as it aims to exploit Trumps cartoonish views on global intervention, which meld the minds of a medieval emperor and a modern-day businessman.

Trump has on several occasions said that the United States should take the oil in conflict zones like Iraq. His explications have varied in focus, but take the oil appears to rest on two basic principles: what is theirs becomes ours once we invade; and foreign wars should at least pay for themselves, if not become profitable ventures.

No Good Strategy

Those who seek a long-term U.S. presence in Afghanistan are now desperate because the president has rejected the war strategy put forward by his bureaucracy and political appointees. According to POLITICO, the National Security Council Principals Committee meeting last week chaired by Trump was a sh*tshow that ended with the president sending back the Afghanistan strategy presented to him, further delaying a review that has already been extended twice.

Within the White House, the McMaster camp has tried to make the hardest sell: doing away with timelines, pressuring Pakistan, and abandoning reconciliation with the Talibana recipe for endless war in a landlocked, impoverished, and factionally divided country.

Earlier this year, McMaster reportedly showed the visually dependent Trump a slideshow of Afghanistan in 1970spresumably the same pictures of local women in miniskirts and hippy tourists that make their rounds on social media every month or so. Trump apparently did not bite McMasters superficial attempt to make the case that the country has a relatively more liberal and peaceful past that can be realized once again.

Afghanistans Minerals Miracle Fails to Materialize

Since Trump came into office, Afghan officials, including President Ashraf Ghani, have tried to quell the U.S. presidents Afghan-skepticism by talking up the countrys mineral potential.

In 2010, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon identified vast deposits of copper, gold, iron, lithium and other minerals in Afghanistan. Media-savvy Gen. David Petraeus spoke of great prospects of Afghanistans mineral industry and a Pentagon memo provided to the Times described the country as a potential Saudi Arabia of lithium. Afghan officials claimed that the mineral wealth provided the country with a path away from donor dependency.

But the case of the Mes Aynak copper mine demonstrates the false promise of Afghanistans mineral wealth being a short-to-medium term positive game-changer.

In 2007, Kabul granted a consortium led by the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) a $3 billion, thirty-year lease to mine Mes Aynak, home to Afghanistans largest copper deposits. Ten years later, extraction of copper has yet to begin on the site. The project is at a standstill as security concerns grow and the MCC looks to revise the terms of the contract, not only lowering Kabuls royalty rate, but also eliminating some components of the project, including a coal power plant and railway line. Similarly, an Indian consortium that was awarded a concession five years ago at the massive Hajigak iron ore mine continues to hedge and reportedly never signed a final contract with Afghanistans Ministry of Mines and Petroleum.

Enter the Dark Prince

The leading American proponent of a resource-driven war in Afghanistan is Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Inspired by the British East India Company, Prince has called for replacing U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan with private mercenaries who focus on securing Afghanistans resources, including its vast mineral deposits, instead of its people, rejecting the population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine that has become part of the Beltway orthodoxy since the Iraq surge.

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The Plan to Exploit Afghanistan for Its Resources Is a Really Bad Idea - The National Interest Online