By Rosa Prince, New York
10:20AM BST 26 May 2012
The United States Defence Department announced that a serviceman had died from "complications associated with a medical condition," becoming the 3,000th casualty according to a tally compiled by the broadcaster CNN.
The death comes as Nato armies hastened preparations for a pullout after more than a decade of fighting.
Most of those who have lost their lives during the more than 10 years of Operation Enduring Freedom have been American – 1,974 to date. British troops have suffered the second highest level of deaths among coalition of 28 nations, with 414 deaths.
Fatality number 3,000 was named as petty Officer 1st Class Ryan J Wilson, 26, of Shasta, California, who died in Manama, Bahrain, on May 20.
The Defence Department said that he had been assigned to the US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain, from where he had been supporting the mission in Afghanistan
According to the US Navy website, Officer Wilson was an intelligence specialist who was named Sailor of the Quarter after successfully leading a maritime operations centre last year.
A letter of commendation which accompanied the award said: "Your enthusiastic leadership emphasised the responsibility of sailors to mentor junior personnel, eliminate communication problems, enhance career development, and inspire senior petty officers to assume leadership roles."
He had been in the Navy since 2004.
Officer Wilson's death comes more than 10 years after the war's first casualty. US Air Force sergeant Evander Earl Andrews from Maine was killed in a heavy equipment accident in November 2001.
Operation Enduring Freedom was launched shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, and at the time politicians on both sides of the Atlantic expressed the hope that no Coalition lives would be lost.
British and American forces are due to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014.
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