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AFGHANISTAN: Navy officers killed in insurgent attack.

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UPDATE: Lt. Florence B. Choe was serving as a medical administration and logistics mentor to the Afghan National Army, not a nurse as initially reported.

A Navy officer from Naval Medical Center San Diego has been killed while on duty in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced Saturday. Also killed was a Navy civil engineer from a unit based in Hawaii.

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Their deaths mark the 27th and 28th fatalities of Navy personnel in Afghanistan since 2002. The Navy has 2,606 personnel in Afghanistan: medical personnel, security personnel, Seabees, and other units.

Lt. Florence B. Choe, 35, of El Cajon, and Lt. Francis L. Toner, IV, 26, of Ventura County, were shot to death Friday by an insurgent dressed as an Afghan soldier at Camp Shaheen at Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan.

Choe, from the Navy hospital in San Diego’s Balboa Park, had been in Afghanistan for several months.

Toner graduated from Westlake High School in Ventura County in 2001, where he was a football star, according to the Ventura County Star. He was set to come home soon to visit his wife, Brooke, the newspaper said.

A third U.S. military personnel, as yet unidentified, was wounded. The insurgent killed himself, officials said.

Tony Perry, San Diego

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