Beach-based SEAL's grenade may have killed British hostage

A military investigation into the death of a British captive during an attempted rescue 7,000 miles away will likely focus on the actions of a Navy commando based in Virginia Beach.

Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Votel, chief of staff at U.S. Central Command, has been tapped to lead the inquiry into the botched rescue of British aid worker Linda Norgrove in Afghanistan on Saturday.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Norgrove may have accidentally been killed by a grenade thrown by a Navy SEAL during the rescue. It also alleged that the SEAL did not immediately report having thrown the grenade. In the hours after the attack, British and U.S. military accounts said she died when a captor detonated a bomb.

Norgrove, 36, worked for a U.S. aid organization. She and three Afghan co-workers were ambushed and kidnapped on Sept. 26 while driving through Kunar province, in Afghanistan's mountainous eastern region.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama approved the covert rescue mission, which involved a team of highly trained special operators rappelling out of a helicopter and into the compound.

That's the kind of work handled by Navy SEALs stationed in Virginia Beach. Formerly known as SEAL Team Six, the counter-terrorism commandos from Dam Neck - an annex of Oceana Naval Air Station - are now part of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

The classified outfit is rarely identified by name, but according to The Guardian, the SEALs were familiar with the terrain and the enemy, and had been operating in Kunar for months.

High-altitude surveillance from unmanned drones had traced the kidnappers to a mud-walled compound high in the Korengal Valley, according to The New York Times - an area that has seen bloody firefights in recent years between the Taliban and U.S. forces.

According to multiple accounts of the raid, six of Norgrove's captors were killed in the initial assault, but one managed to drag her out of a hut. She died moments later in a massive explosion.

Initially, British and U.S. officials said Norgrove was killed in a captor's suicide explosion. But footage from the raid, and doubts from one of the task force commanders who watched the operation from afar in real time, led to a different possibility.

According to Maj. Sunset Belinsky, a spokeswoman at NATO headquarters in Kabul, the commander's video review hours after the attack "showed what was believed to be a member of the rescue team throwing a hand grenade in the area near where Linda Norgrove was later found."

By Monday, U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, had phoned the British prime minister to share growing doubts about how Norgrove died.

"That evidence and subsequent interviews with the personnel involved," said Cameron, speaking to reporters in London, "suggest that Linda could have died as a result of a grenade detonated by the task force during the assault. However, this is not certain and a full U.S./U.K. investigation will now be launched."

A spokesman for U.S. Central Command said Gen. James Mattis ordered an investigation into Norgrove's death, at Petraeus' request. Votel's team will work in close cooperation with U.K. authorities, the command said in a news release.

The Guardian reported that after the commander's video review, he asked the SEALs involved if any had used a fragmentation grenade. No one had reported using grenades during the post-mission brief, but after questions from the commander, one stepped forward and said he had, the newspaper said.

Central Command spokes-man Lt. Cmdr. William Speaks would not comment on the Guardian's story, which reported that the SEAL who allegedly threw the grenade faces disciplinary action.

"We have made no conclusions whatsoever," Speaks said.

For his part, Prime Minister Cameron seemed reluctant to second-guess the rescue effort.

"I'm clear that the best chance of saving Linda's life was to go ahead, recognizing that any operation was fraught with risk for all those involved, and success could by no means be guaranteed," Cameron said in his Monday statement. "We should also remember that ultimately the responsibility for Linda's death lies with those who took her hostage."

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com