Blast kills US soldier in Afghanistan

KABUL — U.S. Army Spc. James Slape stepped out of his vehicle in Afghanistan on Thursday trying to help others. The soldier, trained in bomb removal, wanted to clear a path to assist fellow U.S. service members whose vehicle had just hit a roadside bomb in Helmand province. Then a second explosion hit, U.S. military officials said.

Slape, 23, became the seventh U.S. service member killed in combat in Afghanistan this year. The Pentagon released his name Friday night in Washington. The Pentagon said he was a member of the North Carolina Army National Guard’s 430th Explosive Ordnance Company and had trained as an explosive-ordnance disposal technician. He has been posthumously promoted to sergeant.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Sgt. 1st Class Debra Richardson, said that Slape was based in Afghanistan at Camp Dwyer, an installation in Helmand province’s Garmser district. The U.S. military has used it to assist Afghan forces in a region of the country in which the Taliban control broad areas and the Afghan military and police have suffered heavy casualties.

Slape’s unit deployed to Afghanistan in April and is scheduled to return in spring 2019, said Lt. Col. Matthew DeVivo, a North Carolina National Guard spokesman. The Slape family has asked that the media not contact them at this time, DeVivo said.

More than 14,000 U.S. service members are in Afghanistan. President Donald Trump moderately increased the U.S. presence to that number from about 8,400 troops last summer, and he said he will withdraw them as the conditions there merit.

On Saturday, at least two members of the Afghan security forces were killed in Taliban attacks in the capital, Kabul, officials said. Six police officers and three civilians were wounded in the two related bomb blasts.