KABUL, Afghanistan — Warplanes pounded a suspected Taliban compound in the Afghan mountains near where an elite U.S. military team disappeared last week, and violence elsewhere left 38 rebels and Afghan security forces dead as fighting rose ahead of fall elections.

A transport plane flew home the bodies of 16 U.S. troops — eight Navy SEALs and eight other troops — killed when their helicopter was shot down while trying to rescue the missing team, U.S. officials said yesterday.

It was not clear if there were any casualties in the airstrike late Friday in mountains near Asadabad town, Kunar province, close to the Pakistani border. U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said a "battle damage assessment is ongoing."

"We conducted an airstrike on a target we deemed we had to hit immediately. The target was an enemy compound in Kunar province," he said. "The bombing was done using precision guided munitions. The target objective was intelligence-driven."

O'Hara declined to say whether the airstrike was directly related to the missing military team, which was last heard from in the same area Tuesday.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, claimed Friday that militants had captured one of the men and said he was a "high-ranking American" caught in the same area as where the helicopter went down. He reiterated the claim yesterday.

"The soldier is being held in Kunar. Taliban leaders will decide what to do with him," Hakimi said. "He is being kept in a home. His health is all right."

When asked to provide evidence that the soldier was in captivity, he said, "Tomorrow we will give proof."

Hakimi, who also claimed that insurgents shot down the helicopter, often calls news organizations to take responsibility for attacks, and the information frequently proves exaggerated or untrue. His exact tie to the Taliban leadership is unclear.

O'Hara said there was no evidence indicating that any of the soldiers had been taken into captivity.

He said U.S. forces were using all their resources to search for the missing men. The troops are a small team from the special-operations forces, military officials said.

"It's a very demanding area: very mountainous, very wooded, and the likelihood of enemy contact is probable," O'Hara said.

The downed Chinook helicopter had been trying to extract the soldiers when it went into the mountains.

The bodies of the 16 killed in the helicopter crash were loaded in flag-draped caskets onto a C-17 transport plane during an "emotional ceremony" Friday night and flown to Dover, Del., O'Hara said.

The loss was the deadliest single blow to American forces who ousted the Taliban in 2001 and are now fighting the escalating insurgency.

In three months of unprecedented fighting, about 502 suspected insurgents, 57 Afghan police and soldiers, 45 U.S. troops and 134 civilians have been killed.

Eight months ago, Afghan and U.S. officials were hailing a relatively peaceful presidential election as a sign that the Taliban rebellion was finished.

In the latest fighting, 25 rebels and six Afghan soldiers were killed in a raid on a mountainous Taliban hideout in central Uruzgan province, Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan said.

The operation came after fighting in the region left 25 people dead earlier last week, including nine tribal elders whom Taliban rebels kidnapped and then killed, apparently in retaliation for the deaths of their own.

U.S. and Afghan forces killed three rebels after coming under attack twice near the southern city of Kandahar, the U.S. military said in a statement.

A roadside bomb exploded on the main road in Paktika province yesterday as a convoy of about 20 vehicles, including cars from the United Nations, drove by, said U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards.

The bomb exploded under a vehicle in the convoy that belonged to the provincial police chief. He was wounded, along with another officer, while four policemen traveling in the back of the vehicle were killed, Gov. Gulab Shah Mungal said.

In Kabul, another 57 Afghans detained as Taliban suspects were freed from U.S. military custody yesterday under an Afghan government reconciliation program.

The men, who had been held at the U.S. military detention center at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, were from a group of 199 due to be freed as part of an effort to encourage rank-and-file Taliban to lay down their arms.

The prisoners were the latest freed after President Hamid Karzai called for custody of all Afghan prisoners in U.S. detention following an outcry over reports of abuse, including the deaths of two inmates at Bagram.

Another 53 were freed in June, 86 in May and 81 in January.

Associated Press reporter Noor Khan contributed to this report.