• 2 SEALs suspected in Mali strangling,

WASHINGTON — Navy criminal authorities are investigating whether two members of the elite SEAL Team 6 strangled an Army Green Beret in June while on a secret assignment in Mali, military officials say.

Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar, a 34-year-old veteran of two tours in Afghanistan, was found dead on June 4 in the embassy housing he shared in the Malian capital, Bamako, with a few other Special Operations forces assigned to the West African nation to help with training and counter terrorism missions.

His killing is the latest violent death under mysterious circumstances for American troops on littleknown missions in that region of Africa. Four American soldiers were killed in an ambush this month in neighboring Niger while conducting what was initially described as a reconnaissance patrol but was later changed to supporting a more dangerous counterterrorism mission against Islamic militants in the area.

The Navy SEALs’ potential involvement also raised the prospect of a highly unusual killing of an American soldier by fellow troops, and threatened to stain SEAL Team 6, the famed counterterrorism unit that carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Sgt. Melgar’s superiors in Stuttgart, Germany, almost immediately suspected foul play, and dispatched an investigating officer to the scene within 24 hours, military officials said. Agents from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command arrived soon after and spent months on the case before handing it off Sept. 25 to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

No one has been charged in Sgt. Melgar’s death. The biggest unanswered question is why Sgt. Melgar was killed.