Army Sgt. Clifton Yazzie, 23, of the 101st Airborne Division, was killed Friday during his second tour of duty in Iraq, the Farmington Daily Times reported today on its Web site.

Yazzie was a 2001 graduate of Kirtland Central High School and was a member of the state championship basketball team during his senior year, the Daily Times reported.

Details of his death haven't been released yet by the Defense Department, the paper reported.

Yazzie leaves a wife, 21-year-old Michelle, and two children, Chaynitta, 3, and Cayden, 18 months, as well as his parents, Clifford "C.Y." Yazzie and Jeanette Yazzie, who told the newspaper she received the news from uniformed military personnel who knocked on her door while she was watching television.

Yazzie enlisted in his first tour of duty in Iraq in 2001, then re-enlisted in 2005 after being home in Fruitland for about five months, the Daily Times said.

His mother told the paper Yazzie had always wanted to be a soldier, and his father said serving in the military was a longstanding family tradition.

Yazzie, a member of Apostolic Faith Tabernacle in Fruitland, would have turned 24 on Feb. 24, and, according to the Daily Times, was a member of the Mud clan and was born for the Zuni clan. His maternal grandfather is of the Red Running into Water clan and his paternal grandfather is of the Salt clan, the Daily Times reported.
Funeral services are pending.

Yazzie is the 18th member of the military from New Mexico to die since the war in Iraq began. There have been five New Mexicans in the military to die in Afghanistan.

8:20am UPDATE: The Associated Press reports that Yazzie was the 17th New Mexican soldier to die in Iraq. The Albuquerque Journal's lists also include another soldier -- Army Sgt. Lee Duane Todacheene, a medic who was killed in an Iraqi ambush in early April 2004 -- who was a resident of Lukachukai, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation, but attended school in Farmington.

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