KABUL (Reuters) - The body of a second U.S. sailor who went missing in Afghanistan last week has been recovered, an Afghan police chief said on Thursday.
Logar provincial police chief Ghulam Mustafa told Reuters that his captors had probably dumped the body after the sailor died from wounds received in the incident that led to his capture.
"The body was spotted by villagers," he said.
A U.S. defense official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, earlier also reported the recovery and it comes two days after officials announced they had the remains of the first sailor.
The two U.S. Navy service members went missing on Friday after failing to return in a vehicle they had taken from their compound in Kabul, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Saturday.
The alliance had no immediate comment on the latest report.
On Sunday, the Taliban said they were holding prisoner one of the two sailors, who had strayed into territory controlled by the insurgents just south of the capital, and that the other had been killed.
ISAF scrambled helicopters and planes to look for the pair after they went missing, but officials have declined to give anything but scant details since, prompting speculation that the two had been acting outside the chain of command.
Leaflets depicting photos of the men were distributed in Logar province where the two went missing, less than 100 km (60 miles) south of Kabul and announcements on local radio stations offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to a rescue.
On Sunday, a spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location that the group's leadership would decide later on the fate of the second sailor.
It was not immediately possible to get comment from the Taliban.
The only other foreign service member believed held by the Taliban is Idaho National Guardsman Bowe Bergdahl, whose capture in June last year triggered a massive manhunt. His captors have issued videos of him denouncing the war, in what the U.S. military has called illegal propaganda.
Last month was the deadliest of the nine-year war in Afghanistan for foreign troops, with more than 100 killed.
(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in WASHINGTON; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
