Four U.S. Army soldiers who went missing while training in Lithuania have died, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Wednesday.
Rutte said he received word of the deaths of the four soldiers while traveling to Warsaw and that his thoughts were with their families and with the United States.
“This is still early news so we do not know the details. This is really terrible news and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones,” Rutte told reporters in Warsaw.
Few details surrounding the incident were immediately provided by U.S. officials. A U.S. official would say only that the four soldiers were involved in a training accident, The Associated Press reported. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would not comment on the status of the soldiers.
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The soldiers were conducting scheduled tactical training near Pabradė, a town north of the capital Vilnius, when they went missing, U.S. Army Europe and Africa public affairs in Wiesbaden, Germany, said in a statement.
It was unclear when the soldiers, all from the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, went missing.
Further updates about the search for the missing soldiers would be provided as information becomes available, the U.S. military said.
Four U.S. soldiers and one tracked vehicle were missing, according to Lithuania’s armed forces, which said in a statement obtained by Reuters that they were informed about the missing soldiers on Tuesday.
“A possible location of the incident has been identified and a search and rescue operation is underway,” the statement said.
The training ground in Pabradė is located less than 6 miles from the border with Belarus.
“I would like to personally thank the Lithuanian Armed Forces and first responders who quickly came to our aid in our search operations,” Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, the V Corps commanding general, said in a written statement. “It’s this kind of teamwork and support that exemplifies the importance of our partnership and our humanity regardless of what flags we wear on our shoulders.”
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Lithuania, a member of NATO, has often had tense relations with Russia, a key ally of Belarus, since declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. Latvia and Estonia, the other Baltic countries that broke away from the Soviet Union, have had similarly chilly ties with Russia.
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Relations soured further over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has been one of the most outspoken supporters of Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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