Navy SEALs Killed: Remains of U.S. Service Members Due to Arrive in Delaware

Officials at Dover Air Force Base are preparing to accept the remains of 30 American troops, including 22 Navy SEALs, who were killed Saturday when their helicopter was shot down by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials said two C-17s carrying the remains departed from Afghanistan Monday night en route to Dover, where they were expected to arrive Tuesday morning, The Boston Herald reported.

Families of several of the fallen service members were being brought to Dover, military officials said, but there will be no media coverage, a decision that is typically made by the individual families.

Military officials said they were imposing a ban on media coverage because the badly damaged remains are mingled and still being identified.

On Monday, President Barack Obama said the United States will succeed in Afghanistan, despite their deaths.

"We will press on, and we will succeed," Obama said Monday as the troops' remains were being prepared to be flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware Tuesday. "Our responsibility is to ensure that their legacy is an America that reflects the courage, commitment and sense of common purpose."

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday the deaths were a sobering affirmation of the U.S resolve and commitment to complete the mission still at hand."

Still, Pentagon Press Association President Nancy Youssef said the association was "seeking a way for the public to have a record of this poignant, important ceremony."

In February 2009, Obama loosened the 18-year Pentagon ban on media coverage of returning U.S. war dead, instead, leaving the decision to the families.

Marking one of the deadliest incidents in the decade-long war 30 service members were among 38 people killed -- including seven Afghan commandos -- in a Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter that was shot down on an overnight rescue mission to help a U.S. Army Ranger unit that was under fire from insurgents.

The Taliban said they shot down the helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Twenty-two of those killed were Navy SEALs from the Virginia Beach, Va., Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly known as SEAL Team Six -- the same unit that carried out the May that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. They were not, however, the same people who participated in the Pakistan raid.